The National Security Agency and Australian intelligence agency the Defence Signals Directorate mounted a “massive” spying operation on Indonesia during the UN climate change conference in Bali in 2007, The Guardian reports, citing a new document from whistleblower Edward Snowden. The spy agencies’ focus was not on climate but on gaining the phone numbers of Indonesian security officials, a task at which they mostly failed, the newspaper reports.
The EPA has deleted the Sola Optical USA, Inc. site in Petaluma, Calif., from the Superfund National Priorities List, following tests showing that the site no longer poses a threat to human health or the environment. Sola Optical operated a lens factory at the site from 1978 to 2001, resulting in chlorinated solvent and other chemical releases to the soil and groundwater. The California Regional Water Quality Control Board first ordered investigations of the site in 1983, and it was placed on the federal Superfund list in 1990.
Pesticide producer Progressive Nutrition has agreed to pay a civil penalty totaling $125,000 to settle allegations that the company manufactured 10 pesticide products at its Norfolk, Neb., facility in 2010 and 2011, when it was not registered as a pesticide-producing establishment as required by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). The EPA says Progressive sold unregistered and misbranded pesticides on at least 63 occasions in those two years, with pesticide labels that did not include a valid EPA registration number, directions for use, or storage and disposal instructions.
