WASHINGTON — The Bush administration says changes it wants to make to endangered species rules before President Bush leaves office will have no significant environmental consequences.
That’s the conclusion of an assessment released Monday by the Interior Department.
The administration in August proposed letting federal agencies approve power plants, dams and other projects without consulting government wildlife experts in some cases. Current regulations require government biologists to be consulted in all cases — even when a project is unlikely to harm threatened wildlife or the places they live.
Environmentalists complained that lawyers and political appointees, rather than scientists, did the evaluation.
Puerto Rico: Toxic metals found in produce grown on Navy range
A new study has found dangerous levels of toxic metals in produce grown on a Puerto Rican island formerly used as a Navy bombing range, despite U.S. government claims that the soil there is safe. Some products from a research farm on Vieques Island had as much as 20 times the acceptable amount of lead and cadmium, according to the study released last week by the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. Researchers said peppers, spinach and tomatoes showed higher levels of contamination than products from the nearby Puerto Rican mainland and would pose a health risk to humans.
New Jersey: Casinos delay smoking ban
Atlantic City’s less-than-two-week-old ban on smoking in casinos will be on hold for a least a year under a measure narrowly approved Monday by the City Council and quickly signed by the mayor. Casinos said the ban cut into their business, while their workers were deeply divided whether its health benefits outweighed the potential economic harm. Some at Monday’s meeting shouted “Save Our Jobs!” while others chanted “Save Our Lives!”
Arkansas: 2 die in school shooting
A shooting that left two students dead at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway did not appear to be random, authorities said Monday as the school’s president pronounced the campus secure. Three people are being questioned but no one has been charged in Sunday night’s shooting, which wounded a third person at the 12,500-student campus. Though investigators have not determined a motive for the shooting, “It does not seem at this time that it was a random act,” campus police Lt. Preston Grumbles said.
South Carolina: Boy kills his pregnant mother
A 14-year-old boy faces two counts of murder in the deaths of his mother and unborn sister she was carrying, authorities said Monday. Sherryle Terry, 35, who was eight months pregnant, was shot several times in her home on Sunday night. The girl she was carrying also died in the shooting, Darlington County Coroner Todd Hardee said. The boy was arrested a few hours later at a relative’s house after witnesses told police he was the shooter, said Darlington County Chief Deputy Tom Gainey, who would not talk about what the teen said to investigators. The teen also shot his 12-year-old sister in the neck, but she is expected to survive, Gainey said.
Nebraska: 12-year-old abandoned
A woman drove her troubled 12-year-old son from Georgia to Nebraska and abandoned him under the state’s unique safe-haven law, which parents have used to leave 20 children at hospitals since the law took effect in July. The boy, from the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna, was dropped off at BryanLGH Medical Center East in Lincoln on Saturday night, said Todd Landry of the Department of Health and Human Services. He is the third child from out of state brought to Nebraska to be abandoned under the law. The law, intended to protect newborns, includes the word “child,” which some have interpreted to mean teenagers. Most of the Nebraska Legislature’s 49 senators have agreed to amend the law in January so it applies only to infants up to 3 days old.
Congo: Mobs stone U.N. soldiers
Furious mobs stoned U.N. soldiers’ compounds in Goma on Monday, venting outrage at what they claimed was a failure to protect them from rebels, and thousands of desperate people fled advancing rebel troops. In what appeared to be a major retreat, hundreds of government soldiers pulled back Monday from the battlefront north of the provincial capital of Goma — fleeing any way possible, including using tanks, jeeps and commandeered cars. Soldiers honked their horns angrily as they struggled to push through throngs of displaced people on the main road.
Cuba: War crimes trial hits snag
The military tribunal of an alleged former aide to Osama bin Laden hit a snag Monday as both the prisoner and his Pentagon-appointed lawyer refused to take part in what was scheduled to be the second war crimes trial at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Ali Hamza al-Bahlul sat mutely at the defense table as his lawyer announced the prisoner would boycott the trial because he did not want a military attorney and the judge had denied his repeated requests to represent himself.
From Herald news services
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