Connect with us

INTERNACIONAL

EPA chief wraps national tour as critics slam deregulation agenda

Published

on


NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin just capped off a nine-and-a-half month 50-state tour around the country talking to various folks impacted by his agency’s policies. 

Advertisement

Zeldin completed his tour Friday after having made numerous reforms while on the road, including an agreement with Mexico to stop their wastewater from continuing to flow into the United States, a new directive that will help expedite the cleanup of nuclear waste in Missouri, rescission of an emissions rule and new guidance on diesel exhaust fuel aimed at helping farmers and truckers. 

Meanwhile, Zeldin also visited sites of major environmental disasters, such as East Palestine, Ohio, which is still dealing with the after-effects of a major chemical spill that happened during the Biden administration, and Los Angeles, which has recently seen several devastating wildfires. 

NEWSOM PUSHES CLIMATE RECORD ABROAD AS CALIFORNIANS SHOULDER AMERICA’S HIGHEST GAS COSTS

Advertisement

Environmental Protection Agency Headquarters Building in Washington DC (Getty)

«From business owners to trade workers, elected officials to residents impacted by environmental challenges, I’ve been soliciting feedback on any and every way the Trump EPA can fix everything,» Zeldin said after the culmination of his tour.

One of the accomplishments Zeldin is touting includes a July Memorandum of Understanding to address sewage spillage from the Tijuana River. Raw sewage has been flowing into Southern California from Mexico for decades, which Zeldin’s EPA said has led to beaches being forced to close, harm to the region’s economy and sickness on either side of the border.

Advertisement

EPA administrator Zeldin also released an «EPA Region 7 Status Update for West Lake Landfill Superfund Site» located in Bridgeton, Missouri and Coldwater Creek. The update cut two years off the initial start date of the project, according to the EPA. The waste is scheduled to be entirely cleaned up by 2038.

Another reform includes rescinding guidance from the «Preparation of Clean Air Act Section (CAA) 179B Demonstrations for Nonattainment Areas Affected by International Transport of Emissions.» Zeldin’s EPA said that the guidance made it «unnecessary difficult» for states to prove that foreign air pollution was harming Americans, not theirs, and seek regulatory relief under the Clean Air Act. Zeldin said this was of major concern for elected officials and business owners in Arizona and Utah. 

Part of this reform will include a reevaluation of a determination by the federal government of how much international emissions are impacting residents in the Wasatch Waterfront area, in Utah.

Advertisement

FLARING CLIMATE PROTESTS BECOMING MORE CONFRONTATIONAL AS FREE SPEECH TESTED GLOBALLY

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin speaks as he tours Nucor Steel Berkeley with U.S. Vice President JD Vance on May 1, 2025, in Huger, South Carolina. (Kevin Lamarque-Pool/Getty Images)

Zeldin also announced in Iowa that new action would be taken to «protect» farmers, truckers and other individuals who need to operate diesel-fueled engines during his trip. In conjunction with the U.S. Small Business Administration, the government is pushing engine and equipment manufacturers to revise emissions control system software in existing vehicles and equipment that has been compelling sudden speed and power losses and costing businesses a lot of money in order to comply with strict regulations.

«Together we are empowering the great American comeback,» Zeldin insists in a video his team posted to social media about the conclusion of his tour. However, there are some folks who disagree with Zeldin. 

Advertisement

«Administrator Zeldin is supposed to safeguard the environment and public health, yet under his watch the Trump EPA is fast-tracking new pesticides — including several containing PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ that build up in our bodies and never break down,» Alex Formuzis, spokesperson for the Environmental Working Group, told Fox News Digital. «At the same time, he is tearing apart core protections on toxic air pollution, contaminated drinking water, hazardous industrial discharges, and even bedrock legal decisions that allow the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks under the Clean Air Act.»

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP  

Zeldin was «alarmingly right» about enacting one of the «biggest de-regulatory action[s]» in history, Formuzis added, calling it «a wholesale retreat from facts, science and environmental and public health protection.» 

Advertisement

«Hardly an agenda to make Americans healthy,» he added.

Protesters, signs

Climate activists protest in New York City.   (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston)

Environmental groups have sued Zeldin’s EPA and the Trump administration over many of their regulatory rollbacks. Earthjustice Action and WE ACT for Environmental Justice have recently challenged Zeldin’s bid to scrap federal greenhouse-gas reporting rules in a Nov. 3 filing.

«The climate crisis is a public health crisis, and EPA’s proposed repeal of the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program will exacerbate both,» the groups wrote. «At a time when millions of Americans are losing access to healthcare and millions more are seeing polluting data centers and energy generators built in their backyards, it is imperative that EPA uphold its mission to protect human health and the environment.»  

Advertisement

environment regulation,regulation,climate change environment,environment,politics

INTERNACIONAL

EXCLUSIVE: Bondi DOJ transfers death row inmates commuted by Biden to ‘supermax’ prison

Published

on


NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

FIRST ON FOX — Two federal inmates previously on death row — one a crooked New Orleans cop, the other behind a multi-state killing spree — have been transferred to a notorious «supermax» prison in Colorado, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital. 

Advertisement

News of their transfers comes as U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi looks to crack down on the previous administration’s sweeping clemency actions, especially those against violent crime. 

The former death row inmates were transferred Thursday to the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado, also known as «ADX,» Justice Department officials confirmed. 

TONY HAWK, TAIWAN AND A FLASHLIGHT: TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT SUSPECT’S BIZARRE DEFENSE

Advertisement

They are among the 37 death row inmates whose sentences former President Joe Biden commuted shortly before leaving office last December. The news prompted criticism and complaints that the record clemency and commutation actions were done as a political «Hail Mary» and without proper vetting.

Eight death row inmates have already been transferred to ADX, the Justice Department told Fox News Digital, bringing to 10 the number of death row inmates that have been transferred to the prison since mid-September. 

President Donald Trump walks with Attorney General Pam Bondi during a visit to the Justice Department March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Advertisement

More are expected soon. all 37 death row inmates commuted by Biden are expected to be moved to the prison by «early next year,» the Justice Department told Fox News Digital.

The effort comes as Bondi and the Trump administration have sought to reverse some of the Biden administration’s efforts on criminal justice reform, with an emphasis on cracking down on violent crime.

Though sentence commutations cannot be fully reversed, Justice Department officials told Fox News Digital, Bondi has prioritized ways to penalize these individuals in coordination with directives from Trump and to ensure that the «conditions of confinement» are «consistent with the security risks those inmates present because of their egregious crimes, criminal histories and all other relevant considerations,» according to an earlier DOJ memo. 

Advertisement

«Two more monsters who plotted and violently murdered innocent people will spend the rest of their lives in our country’s most severe federal prison,» Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

«This Department of Justice will continue to seek accountability for the families blindsided by President Biden’s reckless commutations of 37 vicious predators.»

Like the eight former death row inmates sent to Colorado’s supermax prison, the two criminals processed in ADX Thursday have been convicted of particularly heinous crimes. 

Advertisement

One individual chased down his ex-girlfriend from Roanoke, Virginia, to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he cut phone lines to the apartment she was living in before using cans of gasoline to set the building on fire.

BIDEN CLEMENCY ANNOUNCEMENT GETS MIXED REVIEWS ON CAPITOL HILL: ‘WHERE’S THE BAR?’

ADX Florence

The ADX supermax prison in Florence, Colo. (Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Sygma via Getty Images)

Though she escaped via a second-story window and was hospitalized for second- and third-degree burns, he followed her back to her family’s home in Virginia two months later, where he gunned her down on the streets of her neighborhood and just steps from her mother.  

Advertisement

Another inmate, a former New Orleans police officer known as «Robocop» for his large physical demeanor and aggressive law enforcement style, was caught on tape by the FBI as he ordered and orchestrated the killing of a mother of three who had come to the precinct hours earlier to submit a supposedly confidential brutality complaint about his behavior that she witnessed on her way home the night before. 

The FBI had stumbled upon the conversation as part of a broader probe it had started to investigate a so-called «protection racket» between cocaine dealers in New Orleans and the city’s police force, which had been guarding a warehouse stocked with the drug. The same officer was later revealed as one of the chief conspirators in the protection racket. 

BIDEN STIRS OUTRAGE IN SCRANTON BY COMMUTING ‘KIDS FOR CASH’ JUDGE’S SENTENCE

Advertisement
Attorney General Pam Bondi at a Senate hearing.

Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared before a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

He was also found to have falsely testified in two murder cases, including one murder he has since been linked to. The statements were used to exonerate four men from prison, including three teenagers who had been wrongfully convicted of a murder 28 years earlier.

ADX is the only true federal «supermax» prison in the U.S., and its inmates are as notorious as the prison’s reputation. 

Among them are Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers; former Sinola Cartel leader Joaquín Guzmán, or «El Chapo»; and Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the co-founder of al Qaeda.

Advertisement

Shortly after her confirmation as attorney general, Bondi issued a memo aimed at «restoring a measure of justice» to the victims’ families. 

The measures granted by Biden earned more criticism than former President Barack Obama. As Fox News reported at the time, the vast majority of Obama’s clemency actions focused on commuting the sentences of federal inmates who met certain criteria outlined under his administration’s Clemency Initiative.

Bondi hosted victims’ families earlier this year to hear their concerns about the commutations, the DOJ said. Some said they had been stunned by the eleventh-hour commutations and that they had not been given a heads-up by the Biden administration.

Advertisement

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP 

In February, Bondi issued a memo to the Bureau of Prisons ordering an evaluation of where these prisoners should be detained.

Advertisement

donald trump,justice department,politics,crime world

Advertisement
Continue Reading

INTERNACIONAL

Teachers called ‘true heroes’ after repelling grizzly bear that attacked school group, injuring 11

Published

on


NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

Teachers fended off a grizzly bear that attacked a school group walking along a trail in British Columbia, Canada, on Thursday, officials said.

Advertisement

«The group had stopped along a trail near the community when a grizzly bear emerged from the forest and attacked,» Insp. Kevin Van Damme of British Columbia’s Conservation Officer Service, said in an update on social media. «Teachers successfully repelled the bear using pepper spray and a bear banger.»

Eleven people were injured in the attack, including students in the fourth and fifth grade, according to CBC News.

Two were in critical condition, two in serious condition and the other seven were treated at the scene, the British Columbia Health Services said.

Advertisement

STATE DEPARTMENT WARNS AMERICANS IN JAPAN AS DEADLY BEAR ATTACKS KILL 13 PEOPLE SINCE APRIL: ‘BE DILIGENT’

British Columbia’s Conservation Officer Service said the grizzly emerged from the woods and «attacked.» (Matthew Bailey/VWPics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The incident happened in Bella Coola, a town more than 400 miles north of Vancouver.

Advertisement

The victims were taken to Bella Coola Hospital and were being transferred to Vancouver for further care, Van Damme said.

Officials were still searching for the bear as of Friday, who they believe may have been previously injured.

HIKER’S FRIEND WATCHES IN HORROR AS BROWN BEAR DRAGS MAN INTO BUSHES ON MOUNTAIN: REPORT

Advertisement

«We recognize this incident is distressing for the community. We are in close contact with the Nuxalk Nation as our investigation continues. We thank them for their collaborative efforts to ensure community awareness and shared safety information,» Van Damme said. «Our thoughts are with the victims and their families, and we wish them a full and speedy recovery.»

Bella Coola on a map

Bella Coola is more than 400 miles north of Vancouver in British Columbia. (Google Maps)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Tamara Davidson, British Columbia’s Minister of Environment and Parks, called the teachers who fought off the bear «true heroes,» adding that they were well-prepared, according to the Guardian.

Advertisement



world,wild nature,canada

Continue Reading

INTERNACIONAL

Venezuela restringe los vuelos comerciales desde y hacia el país por las advertencias de Estados Unidos

Published

on



Los vuelos comerciales en Venezuela han sido restringidos a partir de este fin de semana luego de que la Administración Federal de Aviación de Estados Unidos emitió una advertencia a las aerolíneas y pilotos sobre los riesgos potenciales de volar en el norte del país caribeño y sus alrededores por la escalada militar aérea registrada.

Varias de las aerolíneas nacionales e internacionales que operan en Venezuela se han visto obligadas a reprogramar sus vuelos e itinerarios por la advertencia aeronáutica de Estados Unidos, que contrasta con el silencio de la autoridad nacional, el INAC, sobre el tema, que no ha emitido ningún comunicado al respecto.

Advertisement

La Administración Federal de Aviación de Estados Unidos emitió una advertencia para operadores aéreos sobre riesgos potenciales al volar en la Región de Información de Vuelo de Maiquetía (SVZM FIR), debido al «empeoramiento de la situación de seguridad y al aumento de la actividad militar en Venezuela o sus alrededores».

Instó a las aerolíneas comerciales y pilotos a extremar la precaución a todas las altitudes, pues consideran que pueden «representar un riesgo potencial para aviones a todas las altitudes, incluso durante el sobrevuelo, las llegadas o salidas y con los aviones en tierra».

El refuerzo del portaaviones Gerald Ford, el más grande y moderno del mundo, se unió a la flota caribeña de EE.UU. acompañado con el buque de reabastecimiento rápido Usns Supply (T-AOE-6), perteneciente al «Comando de Transporte Marítimo Militar» de la US Navy, que salió este viernes desde la base naval de Norfolk, Virginia (ORF), con rumbo al Mar Caribe para unirse a la flota.

Advertisement

Y es que esta semana la zona del despliegue militar de EE.UU. frente a las costas de Venezuela ha generado varias acciones aeronavales con cazabombarderos F-35 y otros que han atacado el espacio aéreo venezolano en el marco de la guerra cibernética o electrónica que han afectado y vulnerado el sistema ruso y chino de radares instalado en el país, lo que ha generado la alerta de EEUU en el espacio aéreo.

Desde hace tres meses el despliegue aeronaval de EE.UU. en el Caribe ha causado el bombardeo de más de 20 embarcaciones de supuestas mafias de narcotraficantes con un saldo de más de 80 muertes, según afirmó el gobierno de Donald Trump.

La decisión de reprogramar o cancelar los vuelos y horarios ha corrido por cuenta de las compañías comerciales sin necesidad de una orden ejecutiva del gobierno venezolano.

Advertisement

Por ejemplo, Iberia ha decidido este sábado cancelar sus vuelos comerciales a Venezuela e irá evaluando la situación en ese país para decidir cuándo retoma sus operaciones, informaron fuentes de la propia compañía.

La línea portuguesa TAP también canceló su vuelo de Caracas a Lisboa este domingo y ofreció reembolsar el pago de los billetes comprados por los usuarios o mantenerlo en reserva para el caso de que vuelen en un futuro indeterminado o indefinido.

La brasileña Gol, a su vez, anunció que suspendía sus viajes programados a la capital venezolana y aclaró que los pasajeros podían reprogramar sus viajes o pedir un reembolso.

Advertisement

“Ahora tengo motivos para quedarme. No me pierdo lo que está pasando en mi país y el cambio de régimen. Esto es histórico”, dijo a Clarín una pasajera que iba en el vuelo cancelado de TAP.

“Quiero irme de aquí en el primer vuelo que aparezca. No me importa lo que tenga que pagar. No quiero ver lo que pasa porque tengo mi billete de retorno y debo irme”, decía otra pasajera venezolana que había venido a Caracas por pocos días para firmar unos documentos y regresar de inmediato a Madrid.

Otras compañías como la venezolana Laser y la española Plus Ultra manifestaron que sus operaciones no presentan al momento cambio alguno, mientras que las que vuelan a Bogotá afirmaron que “suspenden sus vuelos por mal tiempo”. En cambio, la línea nacional Estelar decidió reprogramar su vuelo nocturno del sábado de 12 medianoche para salir a Madrid el domingo a las 8 de la mañana.

Advertisement

Las aerolíneas latinoamericanas también han entrado en la fase de reprogramar el horario de sus vuelos de nocturnos a diurnos por la falta de seguridad y garantía en las operaciones aeronáuticas en el aeropuerto internacional Simón Bolívar de Maiquetía.

“Esto ocurre cuando el espacio aéreo de un país es afectado por una acción militar cibernética y electrónica. Los vuelos comerciales y civiles se ven vulnerados si transitan por la zona con el riesgo de que les pase algo en sus operaciones aeronáuticas. Es prácticamente un bloqueo aéreo peligroso”, afirmó la venezolana oficial Mayor de la Fuerza Aérea Venezolana, Raynell Martínez en su entrevista con Clarín desde su exilio en EE.UU.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Tendencias