The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service is breaking the law by failing to sufficiently protect groundfish in New England, a federal judge ruled last Friday. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said she would issue an order with specific directions for how the agency should stop overfishing, because the NMFS can't be trusted to enforce the 1996 Sustainable Fisheries Act. The region's 1,400 cod and other groundfish trawlers will likely face much tougher limits on where nets can be cast and how many fish can be caught. Environmentalists praised the decision as precedent-setting, while fishers worried that they might be regulated …

And from the other side of the aisle ... U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), normally thought of as environmentally friendly, is championing legislation to protect a mining company from any liability for environmental damage done in its 125 years of operating in the senator's home state. The company, Homestake Mining, plans to close its gold mine in South Dakota's Black Hills this month; the mine will then be converted to an underground physics laboratory. Under the Daschle bill, which has already been approved by Congress and will likely be signed by President Bush in the next few days, …

For almost four decades, the Monsanto Company discharged toxic waste, including millions of pounds of PCBs, into creeks and landfills in Anniston, Ala. For most of that time, the company knew PCBs were highly toxic: Monsanto consultants placed fish in the contaminated creeks and watched them die within 10 seconds, and confidential internal reports acknowledged the evident dangers. But the company didn't share that information with Anniston residents, who grew up playing in contaminated dirt and fishing and swimming in toxic lakes and streams. The effects on residents remain unknown, and Monsanto opposes comprehensive health studies. Now it's up to …

The U.S. government will no longer consider a business's environmental track record when awarding federal contracts, following the Bush administration's decision to rescind 11th-hour Clinton-era "blacklisting" regulations. The regulations required a business to have a satisfactory record on ethical, environmental, tax, labor, antitrust, and consumer protection laws to win government contracts worth more than $100,000. Repeal of the regulations was a significant triumph for the private sector but a blow to environmental and labor organizations, which argue that the regulations are necessary to prevent the administration from doing business with companies that violate the government's own laws.

It was a grim holiday season for Grigory Pasko, a Russian journalist who was sentenced on Dec. 25 to four years in prison on charges of high treason. A military reporter with an interest in environmental issues, Pasko documented the Russian Navy's practice of dumping old weapons and nuclear waste into the ocean. The treason charges stem from allegations that Pasko shared classified information about the Navy with colleagues in Japan. Russian civil liberties advocates say Pasko's case is an example of widespread state suppression of journalistic freedoms; the U.S. State Department has asked Russia to release Pasko pending his …

Officials in charge of reviving the Florida Everglades have created an outreach program to encourage minority involvement in the region's decades-long, multi-billion dollar restoration plan. The $11 million outreach program accords with 2000 legislation that granted federal funding for Everglades restoration and called on the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to involve minorities in the process. Coordinators of the outreach program hope black, Latino, Native American, poor, and rural Floridians will recognize the benefits of restoration and be given a fair share of related government contracts.

After 15 years as the poster child for international environmental agreements, the Montreal Protocol has slipped into the relative anonymity of a well-functioning accord. As Kyoto Protocol negotiations grab headlines before even yielding a ratified deal, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are quietly on their way to oblivion, through unprecedented, concerted efforts worldwide. That was some of the reassuring news coming out of Montreal earlier this month, during the 10th anniversary meeting of the committee in charge of financing the phase out of ozone-depleting gases in developing countries. Among other things, the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol approved World Bank projects to …

Hey fellow Americans, now that bio-terrorism, federalized airport security, and military star-chambers are becoming a reality, what do you plan to do? Me, I'm going to Disneyland. Okay, maybe not Disneyland, but I have been to New York, Montana, and Oregon recently -- and by plane. I'm also thinking about buying a new computer. I just don't think that makes me a patriot. Which is why I wish the White House, Congress, and the media would stop flacking for the financial sector in the name of patriotism. In peace or in war, the real solution to overcapacity is not maxing …

For those of you who still haven't gotten enough of the Lomborg controversy, look no further than your browser. We've compiled a collection of links to sites that praise the man, haze the man, and walk the middle ground. You Gotta Love the Guy Washington Post book reviewDenis Dutton's blurb-eriffic review of The Skeptical Environmentalist in the Washington Post reads as if it were calculated to drive a green-leaning (or even moderate) reader's blood pressure up into the Dick Cheney range. Smitten with Lomborg's "movie-star" looks and in awe of his 3,000 footnotes, Dutton waxes rapturous over a book he …

Some years ago, well before many outside Denmark knew Bjorn Lomborg's name, a group of his fellow faculty members at the University of Aarhus took the unusual step of developing a website specifically to warn the scientific community and others about flaws in his work. Appalled by Lomborg's scientific pretensions and unfounded conclusions, these faculty members, including a former head of the Danish Academy of Sciences, actively disassociated themselves from him. These faculty members did not want to be associated with Lomborg's work because it is fundamentally flawed. The thesis of Lomborg's book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, is that the environmental …