Countering heated opposition from industry groups on Thursday, California’s top air regulator posed an unwavering defense of the state’s pending cap-and-trade system, which intends to limit greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon trading system.

Shareholders of Canadian oil firm Nexen voted Thursday to favor a $15.1-billion takeover that would place the company into the hands of the Chinese state-owned CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation), although the merger still requires approval by the Canadian government. In a 99-percent assenting vote, shareholders approved the $27.50 per-share offer, bestowing China with its largest overseas energy acquisition ever.

Underscoring the inimical aftereffects of President Obama’s “war on coal,” Alpha Natural Resources announced September 18 it will be shuttering eight coal mines in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, while laying off some 1,200 workers. Expounding on the decision, Alpha CEO and chairman Kevin Crutchfield asserted, "With fundamental changes taking place in our business, we're taking decisive actions that set the table for Alpha to compete successfully as a leader in the global coal markets for years to come.”

While record numbers of Americans are migrating to the disability rolls, new data show that more than a quarter of the cases observed between 2006 and 2010 were improperly awarded. In an 18-month investigation launched by the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, auditors found that about 25 percent of the 300 sampled disability cases were granted benefits “without properly addressing insufficient, contradictory and incomplete evidence.”

A former employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) has released information revealing that the U.S. government has been extracting vast amounts of personal data from its citizens. While working at the agency, NSA whistleblower William Binney managed the development of a covert software program called ThinThread, engineered to address “national security” concerns following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Office of the Special Counsel announced Wednesday that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius violated the Hatch Act by campaigning for President Obama while in her official capacity.

A former banker with the Swiss global financial services company UBS has received a $104-million whistleblower award from the Internal Revenue Service for detailing to the IRS how UBS advised thousands of Americans to evade taxes. Of course, before receiving his astoundingly generous bounty — the largest individual federal reward in U.S. history — Bradley Birkenfeld spent a couple of years in prison, as he himself advised clients on how to shield their assets from the U.S. tax agency.

General Motors, the financially-strained U.S. automaker that absorbed billions of taxpayer dollars through the auto bailout, has secured a new deep-pocketed customer for its purportedly failed electric Chevy Volt: the Pentagon. The Department of Defense is seeking to make the federal government’s military operation more “environmentally-friendly” by reducing its use of fossil fuels with a conversion to electric vehicles.

Day two of the Chicago teacher strike commenced Tuesday, leaving nearly 350,000 students between kindergarten and high school age without schooling for another day, while forcing parents to decide whether to stay home from work, pay for childcare, or leave their children at home to fend for themselves. 

Thousands of public school teachers took to the streets Monday to protest a failed contract that has left union leaders and school district officials in gridlock.

After a debate over new teacher contracts collapsed on September 9, 20,000 public-school teachers in Chicago’s education system went on strike, leaving hundreds of thousands of students without schooling or supervision. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said later that day they had made progress on resolving many provisions in the contract, but “we have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike.”