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The Environmental Protection Agency will propose easing rules on disposal of coal ash, the residue from burning coal, to make it less likely the federal government would shutter a coal-fired utility plant, in an announcement set for Monday. The move is part of what has been a larger deregulation push by the Trump administration to roll back strict Obama-era regulations that the industry viewed as the previous administration’s “war on coal” that pushed to shut down many coal-fired power plants. “The EPA is no longer picking winners and losers in electric generation,” Peter Wright, assistant administrator for EPA Office of...

Oregon is serious about recycling. Its residents are accustomed to dutifully separating milk cartons, yogurt containers, cereal boxes and kombucha bottles from their trash to divert them from the landfill. But this year, because of a far-reaching rule change in China, some of the recyclables are ending up in the local dump anyway. (snip) Theresa Byrne, who lives in Salem, Ore., said the city took too long to inform residents that most plastics and egg and milk cartons were now considered garbage. “I was angry,” she said. “I believe in recycling.” (snip) In particular, exports of scrap plastic to China,...

A bag used to collect lunar samples during the first manned mission to the moon legally belongs to an Illinois woman who bought it for $995 when it was mistakenly sold during a government auction, a judge ruled Wednesday. Judge J. Thomas Marten, of the U.S. District Court in Wichita, said he doesn't have the authority to reverse the sale of the bag used during the Apollo 11 moon mission in July 1969, even though it shouldn't have gone up for auction. The white bag, which has lunar material embedded in its fabric and which the government considers "a rare...

IntroductionAn application programmer spends six months perfecting a set of components commonly needed in the large company that employs him. Some of the components were particularly tricky and key pieces required very high quality, reliable and complex exception handling. It has all been tuned to run quickly and efficiently. Thorough testing has demonstrated his success. Part of his idea of “perfection” was to build in a way that the software, even many of the individual components, could easily be reused. But it is surprisingly likely that no one outside of a small group within the project will ever hear of...

Thrift-driven Americans are fixing up, making do and reusing so much to cope with the recession that the drop in throwaways means less fill for landfills. To deal with the drop-off in dropoffs, landfills are laying off workers, reducing hours of operation and hiking disposal fees, with the increases passed along to cities, businesses and consumers. "You can look at waste and see what the economy is doing," said Tom Houck, manager at the Defiance County Landfill in northwest Ohio. He's watched the amount of trash arriving at the landfill plunge 30 percent in the past year. With consumers cutting...

A team of Marines and civilians work an assembly line to inspect recovered Iraqi weapons before redeploying them to Iraqi Army. Photo taken by Lance Cpl. Ben Eberle. CAMP TAQADDUM -- Since March 2003, coalition forces have seized thousands of unauthorized small arms through security patrols and urban search operations. Marines and civilians with Ammunition Platoon, Supply Company, Combat Logistics Regiment 15, 1st Marine Logistics Group (Forward), are redeploying these weapon systems into the Iraqi Army, turning insurgent resources into coalition assets. “We need to arm our allies,” said Warrant Officer Robert P. Smith, officer-in-charge of Camp Taqaddum’s Ammunition Supply...