Lately it seems like every time Congress passes good legislation, it then defunds the agencies responsible for implementing those policies. The latest example: Back in December, Congress reformed the food safety system to deal with problems similar to, oh, that E. coli outbreak that's sickening thousands of people over in Europe. But on Tuesday, House Republicans voted to cut the Food and Drug Administration's budget so severely that the agency won't have the resources to step up inspections, improve recalls, and hold gigantic food corporations accountable. But don't worry! If you're among the one in six Americans that gets sick …

The Indian state of Bihar has only a 33 percent literacy rate for women -- the lowest in the country. But the state government, headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, is turning education for girls around -- with bicycles. In 2007 Kumar instituted a plan to give schoolgirls money to buy bicycles once they successfully complete Class 8 (eighth grade). With girls now able to easily get themselves to school, Bihar swelled its Class 9 enrollment by 170,000 in the program's first year. The state gave out 871,000 bikes in its first three years, and dropouts among girls have dropped …

At least four people died after a tornado touched down in Massachusetts. That E. coli strain that's killing people in Europe? Yeah, it's a terrifying, never-been-seen-before mutant. Can the world stop pretending it's in a Robin Cook thriller now, please? The World Bank is going to help cities around the world finance projects that reduce carbon emissions. The Obama administration was going to keep some public lands wild. But then Republicans complained, and the Interior Department abandoned the wild lands plan. Because that's how Democrats roll. Thirty-four members of Congress asked the State Department to take a closer look at …

President Obama nominated long-time successful energy executive John Bryson to be secretary of commerce yesterday, in a move representative Darrell Issa calls "deeply out of touch with our current energy challenge." Wait, what? See, before Bryson was the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, or the CEO of Edison International, or the director of Boeing, or a trustee at CalTech, or the chairman of the board of BrightSource Energy (which built Google's solar farms), he co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council. A hippie! What do hippies know about our current energy challenge?? Issa's not the only one throwing shade. …

I was going to put a joke in the headline, but is it really necessary? I mean, here are the facts without jokes: Chris Christie, the transit-killing, mall-building, climate-initiative-withdrawing governor of New Jersey, hopped on a state helicopter to go to his kid's baseball game -- and once he alit, a private car took him the 100 yards from the helicopter's landing site to the bleachers. See, now, didn't you laugh? Sure, it was a bitter, hollow laugh, but still. Apparently Christie's vision of the future is one in which we don't need public transportation because we all flit around …

Are you ready to flip the bird at your utility company? Lord knows you probably will be after you get the bill for what's shaping up to be an especially hot June. Luckily, a whole host of companies working on improving a novel solar technology would like to help you do it. The new tech is called thin-film solar, and the global research director of GE thinks it will soon be cheap enough to compete with the retail price of electricity from the grid. This is called "grid parity" and it's the Holy Grail of rooftop solar. When this magic …

To prevent rolling blackouts as a result of the failure of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, the Japanese government is mandating that all offices set their thermostats at 82 degrees F this summer. Combined with the usual salaryman armor -- a dark business suit -- that sounds a little like the eighth circle of hell (the one BEFORE the ice). Accordingly, the Ministry of the Environment's Super Cool Biz campaign is urging workers to show up dressed for a day at the beach. In a fashion show put on by Uniqlo, Japan's equivalent of the Gap, workers were introduced to traditional …

Yeah, it actually does need to be said. Folks with an investment in expanding highway infrastructure like to act as though the only way to relieve congestion is to build more roads for those cars to ride on. But a soon-to-be-published study shows that traffic expands to fill the space allotted. More roads don't mean more room -- they mean more cars. There are a few reasons for this, but mainly it's that people drive more when it's easier. It's not that we need to have a certain number of cars on the road, and that number just happens to …

Maybe. The World Health Organization has released a report [PDF] on the connections between cell phone use and cancer. It concluded that cell phones are a "possible" carcinogen, and there was much out-freaking. But what does this really mean? It does not, it turns out, mean that cell phones definitely or even likely cause cancer. It would be more accurate to say that the report says cell phones do not definitely NOT cause cancer. The majority of studies still show no causal link between cell phone use and cancer, writes science blogger extraordinaire Ed Yong. All studies have limitations, which is …

Would Finding Nemo's Nemo have found his dad if he couldn't hear? Probably not! Which is why it's so sad that all of the Nemos out in the ocean (technically, they're called "adorable baby clownfish") are going to lose their hearing, and therefore their sense of when it's time to swim as fast as they can away from predators. Obviously it's all humanity's fault. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means higher ocean acidity, which interferes with the Nemos' ear bones. Scientists found that Nemos reared in water simulating the predicted carbon dioxide concentrations for 2050 and 2100 had no …