TV News LIES

The Obama administration on Friday is due to unveil rules for oil companies that frack on federal land, included beefed-up safety measures, but won't likely require strict oversight as environmental groups want, according to sources.

The standards have been in the works for more than three years and gone through several drafts with environmentalists and the energy industry fighting over its scope.

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan triggered a tsunami that led to the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

While immediate health consequences are yet to be determined, more than 159,000 people were evicted from areas deemed too radioactive for human habitation. The World Health Organization has warned about “increased risk of certain cancers” for people in the most contaminated areas.

From the ground of this extreme northern part of Antarctica, a spectacular white and blinding ice seemingly extends forever. What can't be seen is the battle raging below to reshape Earth.

Water is eating away at the Antarctic ice, melting it where it hits the oceans. As the ice sheets slowly thaw, water pours into the sea, 130 billion tons of ice (118 billion metric tons) per year for the past decade, according to NASA satellite calculations. That's enough ice melt to fill more than 1.3 million Olympic swimming pools. And the melting is accelerating.

Brazilian police have arrested the "biggest deforester" of the Amazon jungle, identified as Ezequiel Antonio Castanha, officials said.

Castanha was arrested last Saturday in a joint operation of Federal Police and the National Security Force in the Amazonian town of Novo Progresso in Para state, the Brazilian Environmental Institute (Ibama) said Monday.

Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against Duke Energy with years of illegal pollution from coal ash dumps at five North Carolina power plants.

The three U.S. Attorney's Offices covering the state on Friday all charged Duke with felony violations of the Clean Water Act. The prosecutors say the nation's largest electricity company engaged in unlawful dumping since at least 2010 at coal-fired power plants in Eden, Moncure, Asheville, Goldsboro and Mt. Holly.

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The long and severe drought in the U.S. Southwest pales in comparison with what’s coming: a “megadrought” that will grip that region and the central Plains later this century and probably stay there for decades, a new study says.

Thirty-five years from now, if the current pace of climate change continues unabated, those areas of the country will experience a weather shift that will linger for as long as three decades, according to the study, released Thursday.