The News

msnbc.msn.com — The Bush administration didn't pursue hundreds of potential water pollution cases after a 2006 Supreme Court decision that restricted the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate seasonal streams and wetlands. From July 2006 through December 2007 there were 304 instances where the EPA found what would have been violations of the Clean Water Act before the court's ruling, according to a memo by the agency's enforcement chief. Officials "chose not to pursue formal enforcement based on the uncertainty about EPA's jurisdiction,' according to the memo, which was released by two Democratic House committee chairmen.

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hosted.ap.org — Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, says a former Environmental Protection Agency official. When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in October 2007, the White House insisted the changes were made because of reservations about the accuracy of the science. But Jason K. Burnett, former senior adviser on climate change to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, says that Cheney's office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC's original draft testimony removed.

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— Inspectors are collecting soil, water and produce samples, reviewing export logs and combing packing plants in three major tomato-growing states in Mexico. But the U.S. Food and Drug Administration appears no closer to finding the source of a mysterious salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 900 people nationwide. The FDA is not even 100 percent sure that tomatoes are the cause — adding peppers and cilantro to its list of foods under investigation in the outbreak. A team of three FDA inspectors has gone through five farms in the western states of Jalisco and Sinaloa in the past two weeks. They also plan to visit the northern state of Coahuila to finish up their study.

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nytimes.com — Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. called on Wednesday for a new regulatory system that would prevent future financial turmoil while allowing even large financial institutions to fail without risking a wider market collapse. "Looking beyond the current market challenges of today, we need to create a resolution process that ensures the financial system can withstand the failure of a large, complex financial firm," Mr. Paulson said, during a London stop on his European tour. He said that any new regulation must give the Federal Reserve, the United States" central bank, access to information from all types of financial institutions, including investment banks, and tools that would reduce risk to the financial system without creating the sense that any troubled institution would be bailed out.

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hosted.ap.org — Claude Kicklighter, the Pentagon's inspector general, is resigning after just over a year in the job and at a time when defense spending has skyrocketed but personnel shortfalls in the oversight office have strained its ability to probe allegations of waste, fraud and abuse. Kicklighter's departure marks yet another shift in leadership at this key Pentagon office. In September 2005, Joseph Schmitz resigned to be chief operating officer and general counsel for the Prince Group, which owns security contractor Blackwater Worldwide. Schmitz's more than three-year tenure as Pentagon inspector general was marred by allegations he improperly interfered with two ongoing investigations to protect senior Bush administration officials. An independent inquiry later cleared Schmitz of any wrongdoing.

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iht.com — Bush administration officials knew that a Texas oil company with close ties to President George W. Bush was planning to sign an oil deal with the regional Kurdistan government that runs counter to U.S. policy and undercuts Iraq's central government, a congressional committee has concluded. U.S. policy is to warn companies that they incur risks in signing contracts until Iraq passes an oil law and strengthens Iraq's central government. The Kurdistan deal, by ceding responsibility for writing contracts directly to a regional government, infuriated Iraqi officials. But documents show that State Department officials did nothing to discourage the deal and in some cases appeared to welcome it.

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