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You may recall that reporters finally caught up with EPA chief Gina McCarthy in DC the other day and asked her about the situation in Flint, Michigan and the dismal (if not criminal) response of her agency. She informed everyone that, “we did our job.” That’s an interesting perspective, particularly in light of the fact that she just accepted the resignation of the Region 5 administrator who sat on reports of toxic water in Flint for months without telling anyone. (The Hill) The regional Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief responsible for Michigan is resigning amid charges that she did not...

EPA regional chief FINALLY resigns over Flint crisis - 22 months after residents first started complaining about the high levels of lead in the water A regional director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has resigned in connection with the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Susan Hedman, the head of the agency's regional office in Chicago whose jurisdiction includes the state, will step down on February 1 so the government can focus solely on the crisis in the city. High levels of lead have been detected in the impoverished city's water since officials switched from the Detroit municipal system...

...now it gets interesting.

I’m one of those masochists who signs up for daily email alerts from several news services just to keep tabs on the stories I might miss on cable news. I get a couple of them from the Washington Post, one of which is the “Five Minute Fix.” These breaking news alerts provide not only a quick glance at the news of the day, but frequently a good look at how reporters at one of the nation’s largest newspapers view the news and choose to project it to the public. Last night’s Fix was a great example of the latter...

Except, weirdly enough, those in Detroit city government I've held off on writing about the Flint water disaster here thus far (although I've dealt with it a couple of times in my Detroit News column) because it seems we learn more every day about what happened and why. Sadly but predictably, Michigan media have treated it mainly as a political story, with the early narrative being something along the lines of "Republicans stick Flint with toxic water to save money." That has prompted absurdities like Michael Moore (who grew up in Flint by the way) showing up and demanding that...

What we learned from Hurricane Katrina: No matter what happens, it's never the governor's fault. What we've learned from the contaminated drinking water in Flint, Mich.: It's always the governor's fault. A bit of background first. Flint has relatively high levels of lead in its drinking water, a cause for legitimate concern. This is a result not so much of the source of its drinking water, the Flint River, as of the city's failure to treat the water, which, without the proper additives, leaches lead and other contaminants from pipes. Prior to and separate from the current water crisis, Flint...

Saying the people of Flint deserve the truth about the city's water, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has released more than 250 pages of his emails that relate to the crisis. But the document dump Wednesday did little to ease the predicament he finds himself in. With each passing day, the chorus for him to step down has grown louder because the water debacle unfolded under his watch. "So far, all roads lead to Lansing when it comes to accountability," Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, who represents the Flint area, said Wednesday. The emails help show, at least in part, how...

Federal managers are using illegal secret settlements that pay disruptive, incompetent or dangerous employees not to work for months on end before quitting on an agreed-upon date as an alternative to endless termination paperwork, legal appeals and costly battles with civil service unions. Government employees accused of wrongdoing often spend months on paid leave, while publicly agencies cryptically speak of lengthy "investigations," even when establishing misconduct can be as simple as talking to a few people or reviewing some documents. Eventually, the agencies will say, just as vaguely, that the person is "no longer employed." Evidence obtained by The Daily...

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder apologized to the residents of Flint for a water crisis that has prompted outrage, federal scrutiny and lawsuits, vowing to seek long-term assistance for the city’s residents. In his State of the State address on Tuesday night, Snyder said he was asking state lawmakers for $28 million to help residents reeling after Flint’s drinking water became contaminated with dangerously high levels of lead. He also vowed to release his emails related to Flint from 2014 and 2015.

A picture of the gun used in the experiments. The big white box at the left end of the gun is where the target is stored. Credit: Impact Laboratory, University of Kent Bullets of ice shot at high speeds can deposit organic compounds on surfaces they strike. New findings suggest that comets might, indeed, have helped deliver key ingredients of life to Earth and perhaps elsewhere, researchers say. The scientists detailed their findings in the June 13 issue of the journal Astrobiology.Craters on the moon are evidence that the Inner Solar System was prone to giant impacts from asteroids...

An investigation by the University of Kansas' Adrian Melott and colleagues reveals a promising new method of detecting past comet strikes upon Earth and gauging their frequencyLAWRENCE, Kan. — It's the stuff of a Hollywood disaster epic: A comet plunges from outer space into the Earth's atmosphere, splitting the sky with a devastating shock wave that flattens forests and shakes the countryside. But this isn't a disaster movie plotline. "Comet impacts might be much more frequent than we expect," said Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. "There's a lot of interest in the rate...

What a powerful telescope had picked up as it stretched towards the night sky over Antarctica was the trail of dust left in the wake of the death of an asteroid... "What he didn't know at the time was that seven hours earlier an asteroid had crashed to Earth in another part of Antarctica, about 1500 kms west of Davis. The closest it got to human habitation was around 900 kms west of Japan's Syowa station," Dr Klekociuk said... Dr Klekociuk said that it was thought that the asteroid had come from what is known as the Aten group somewhere...

On 26 May, JPL's unique orbital calculation software determined that Comet Catalina was on what could possibly be a collision course with Earth, though the odds of such an impact were small: just 1 chance in 300,000 of a strike on June 11, 2085. Based on the 980-metre size estimate, that would produce a 6-gigaton impact - equivalent to 6 billion tonnes of TNT. Astronomers expected the addition of further observations to the calculations to rule out any possibility of a collision, as happens with most newly-seen objects. But that did not quite happen. The comet's predicted pathway actually drew...

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder responded Monday to criticism from presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the Democratic debates for his handling of Flint's water emergency, saying Clinton is making it a political issue. During Sunday's debate, Clinton said "every single American should be outraged" by the water crisis, adding that "if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there would have been action." Following a speaking engagement at a Martin Luther King Day event in Flint, the Republican governor said her tactic doesn't help solve the problem. "We're going to...

It's an El Niño winter, and the news is full of rain, sleet, and snow. If only California was as well. Precipitation so far in this wet winter that is supposed to save us from the worst drought of our lifetimes is only slightly above "normal" — and in some parts of California, including the southern Sierra, precipitation is still below normal. Think about that. The long-awaited wet weather event has, so far, just barely pushed things to around what's supposed to be "normal." This may be a hard fact to fathom this weekend, as you drive through more rain...

County General Services Director Heidi Petito said in a news release Monday that someone opened 20 water lines in a largely undeveloped area known as Plantation Reserve Estates. Petito says the sudden drop in water pressure requires a precautionary boil water notice to be issued. About 1,700 people are affected. It wasn't immediately clear how long they would have to boil water.

If The Big Short, Adam McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book about the 2008 financial crisis and the subject of last month’s Vulture cover story, got you all worked up over the holidays, you’re probably wondering what Michael Burry, the economic soothsayer portrayed by Christian Bale who’s always just a few steps ahead of everyone else, is up to these days. In an email, which readers of the book will recognize as his preferred method of communication, the real-life head of Scion Asset Management answered some of our panicked questions about the state of the financial system, his ominous-sounding water...

FLINT - Filmmaker and Davison native Michael Moore spoke before a fired-up crowd in downtown Flint today about the water crisis. In his speech he asked that President Barack Obama visit Flint, when the president is at the North American International Auto Show next week. Moore said that Obama needs to come to Flint before it becomes the president's version of Katrina, conjuring images of when President Bush flew over, but initially did not go to, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina stuck the city.

Months after a hearing on sexual harassment at the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the House’s top government watchdogs has delivered on his promise to protect the youngest members of the federal workforce. The Federal Intern Protection Act, introduced by Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, unanimously passed the House on Monday.

The U.S. Justice Department on Monday filed a civil lawsuit against Volkswagen AG for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act by installing illegal devices to impair emission control systems in nearly 600,000 vehicles. The allegations against Volkswagen, along with its Audi and Porsche units, carry penalties that could cost the automaker billions of dollars, a senior Justice Department official said. VW could face fines in theory exceeding $90 billion - or as much as $37,500 per vehicle per violation of the law, based on the complaint. In September, government regulators initially said VW could face fines in excess of $18...