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A new report by the Environmental Protection Agency says ozone levels are falling in 19 Eastern states where bad air is common in the summer. The reduction reflects what agency officials describe as a significant decline in emissions of nitrogen oxides, whose reaction with sunlight, other weather conditions and volatile organic chemicals can make the air hard to breathe in the warmer months. The report says that last year, nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and other large sources of combustion in the 19 states... were 30 percent below 2003 levels and 50 percent below those of 2000. The result,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a government-approved program used by five Western states to improve their air quality and visibility in national parks and wilderness areas. Siding with an industry coalition, the court said the states' program was based on Environmental Protection Agency methods that the court, ruling in a case three years ago, had found to be "inconsistent with the Clean Air Act." Friday's decision deals with efforts by Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming to cut sulfur dioxide pollution that contributes to regional haze, particularly at the Grand Canyon. Mike Leavitt, now...

The journalist has the ultimate power, a cynic once said, the power to choose whom to be co-opted by. That temptation is never greater than when you are writing about environmental policy. You can go to the environmental groups and get one set of facts. Or you can go to the industry groups and get an entirely different set of facts. Both sides have long histories of exaggeration and distortion, and there's no other realm of public policy in which it is so hard to find honest brokers, capable of offering a balanced perspective. Nonetheless, over the past couple of...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2002 December 18 Io Volcano Culann Patera Credit: Galileo Project, JPL, NASA Explanation: What causes the unusual colors surrounding Io's volcanoes? Io, the innermost large moon of Jupiter, is known to be the most tumultuous body in the Solar System. Approximately the size of Earth's Moon, Io undergoes nearly continuous volcanic eruptions from an interior heated by gravitational tides from Jupiter and Jupiter's other large moons. The robot...