The Environmental Protection Agency is set to roll back clean air regulations, enabling some old, coal-fired power plants and refineries to emit more air pollutants, an environmental activist group said. The group accused the Bush administration of purposely releasing the final rule while Congress is on recess.
The final rule would make it easier for industrial facilities to upgrade their plants without having to install expensive equipment to fight air pollution, the activist group said. A White House representative said the new policy would help the U.S. electric industry.
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Under the new rule, the Natural Resources Defense Council said if a coal-fired plant replaced a boiler whose cost was less than 20 percent of the replacement cost of the entire process unit -- the boiler, turbine, generator and other equipment that turns coal into electricity -- the company would not have to control any resulting pollution increases. Emissions from coal-fired plants can aggravate asthma, chronic bronchitis and pneumonia.
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Brazil space rocket explodes: A Brazilian rocket due to blast off in coming days exploded at its jungle launch site, destroying Brazil's third attempt to fulfill a long-held dream of sending its own rocket into space. The $6.5 million, 65-foot rocket was to have placed two satellites into orbit.
"The rocket is destroyed," a Brazilian Space Agency representative said, adding that the explosion killed approximately 20 people. Officials said the accident did not happen during an attempted launch.
The rocket was sitting in a large structure on the launch pad at Brazil's tropical Alcantara space base, situated on a jungle peninsula jutting into the Atlantic Ocean in Brazil's Amazon region, when the accident happened. Brazil had been hoping to make the first successful venture into space by a Latin American nation. Rockets launched by Brazil in 1997 and 1999 were destroyed shortly after liftoff because of technical problems.
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A record-size ozone hole: The ozone hole over the Antarctic is growing at a rate that suggests it could be headed for a record size this year, Australian scientists said. A study by Australian Antarctic bases attributed the development to colder temperatures in the stratosphere where the ozone hole forms.
Ozone is a protective layer in the atmosphere that shields the Earth from the sun's rays, in particular ultraviolet-B radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts and can harm marine life. In 2000, NASA said the ozone hole expanded to a record 10.9 million square miles, three times the size of Australia or the United States, excluding Alaska.
The ozone hole in 2003 presently covers the entire Antarctic, an Australian Antarctic Division scientist said. The 1997 Kyoto treaty set in place a global process to reduce greenhouse gases that deplete the ozone layer, but the world's biggest polluter, the United States, has yet to sign.
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Pollution strangles masses of fish: Rhode Island's governor ordered an investigation into a mass fish kill that apparently was caused by low levels of oxygen in Greenwich Bay. Tens of thousands of dead fish were found along the shoreline.
Environmental officials said oxygen levels had dropped to deadly levels because of an abundance of algae, which feeds off pollutants that run into the bay. Heavy rainfall has accelerated the runoff, scientists said, and the recent hot weather and calm waters contributed to the algae bloom that choked the fish.
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