In The News / Jan 27

• Breaking news: Apple cares about every worker in its supply chain, says Tim Cook.

  Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook addressed the company's stance on labor, after an expose published by the New York Times painted a dark picture of suffering factory workers. The blog 9to5mac obtained a copy of a letter Cook sent to Apple employees yesterday. CBS News

• Military: Investigation into S. Korea Agent Orange is over.

  For the last nine months the U.S. Army has drilled, tested and analyzed soil and water at Camp Carroll military base in South Korea for traces of Agent Orange. The result of the roughly $4 million investigation is a 58-page report, in which the Army claims no traces of Agent Orange were found. An environmental expert disagrees. KPHO Phoenix, Arizona

• China cadmium spill threatens drinking water for millions.

  A cancer-causing cadmium discharge from a mining company has polluted a long stretch of two rivers in southern China, and officials warned some 3.7 million people of Liuzhou in the Guangxi region to avoid drinking water from the river, state media reported on Friday. Reuters

• Revamped search urged for a nuclear waste site.

  A commission appointed to find alternatives to a failed plan to store nuclear waste in the Nevada desert declared on Thursday that the United States would have to develop a “consent-based approach” for choosing a site because leaving the decision to Congress had failed. New York Times

• Safety at Washington nuclear-waste site scrutinized.

  A federal oversight panel is raising new concerns to the Department of Energy about potentially serious flaws in the design of a first-of-its-kind, $12 billion waste treatment plant that is being built for the nation's largest radioactive cleanup. USA Today

• Feds list First Nations, green groups as 'adversaries' in oil sands PR strategy.

  The federal government is distancing itself from its own lobbying and public relations campaign to polish the image of Alberta's oil sands, following revelations that an internal strategy document labelled First Nations and environmentalists as "adversaries" while describing the National Energy Board as an "ally." Montreal Gazette, Quebec

• Chevron loses injunction in $18 billion Ecuador case.

  A US appeals court threw out an injunction that Chevron Corp had won to block enforcement of an $18 billion judgment in Ecuador for polluting the Amazon jungle and damaging the health of residents. Reuters

• Chevron to face criminal charges over Brazil spill.

  A Brazilian prosecutor plans to file criminal charges against Chevron Corp and some of its local managers within weeks, adding the threat of prison sentences to an $11 billion civil lawsuit as punishment for a November offshore oil spill. Reuters

• Central Asian states, Iraq last in environmental index.

  Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Iraq -- countries that have long occupied the lower rungs on corruption and freedoms rankings -- now have another disappointing evaluation to add to this list: They're positioned at the very bottom of the 2012 Environmental Performance Index. Journal of Turkish Weekly, Turkey

• Mystery illness in New York town attracts celebrity activists.

  National environmental and health groups are beating a path to LeRoy, poking into the Genesee County community's startling cluster of teenage students with troubling neurological symptoms. Buffalo WGRZ TV, New York

• Effort to ban three chemicals used on Long Island.

  With three million Long Islanders dependent on a single underground aquifer for drinking water, and the annual use of millions of pounds of pesticides, local environmental groups have asked for an immediate ban of the three most frequently found chemicals, atrazine, metalaxyl, and imidacloprid, from use on the Island. East Hampton Star, New York

• Texas county cries foul over EPA's foul-air claim.

  The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to add Matagorda County to the list of Texas' smog violators because Gulf breezes that blow through the area send air pollution toward Houston. Houston Chronicle, Texas

• EPA pushes to reduce impacts of huge West Virginia mountaintop mine project.

  The Obama administration has again questioned a huge mountaintop removal mine associated with the King Coal Highway - "among the largest single mining projects ever proposed in Appalachia" - and is pressuring state regulators and CONSOL Energy to reduce the mine's potential impacts. Charleston Gazette, West Virginia

• FirstEnergy closing 6 coal-fired power plants.

  FirstEnergy Corp. said Thursday that new environmental regulations led to a decision to shut down six older, coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, affecting more than 500 employees. Associated Press

• Tornado myths tough for forecasters to bust.

  "Folk science" — a community's shared beliefs about how the weather works in their town — is a big challenge to forecasters and meteorologists. With climate change expected to bring more extreme weather in the future, creating more-effective warnings is a goal for many researchers. OurAmazingPlanet

• A shaky future for Hispaniola.

  The magnitude-7 quake that devastated Haiti in January 2010 may have been the opening salvo in a decades-long period of increased seismicity, a study suggests. Nature