The trade off between safer eggs and the risk of a deadly salmonella outbreak is just pennies a dozen, according to a in-depth look at the industry by P.J. Huffstutter in the Los Angeles Times. Slightly stricter guidelines in California have helped egg producers avoid bacterial contamination in recent years, but in an industry where the bottom line reigns supreme, tighter rules have caught on in only nine of the 50 states.

Local officials in California are going head to head with federal authorities over a program requiring local law enforcement to cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency's attempts to deport undocumented immigrants.

Steve Daniels of Crain's Chicago Business reports that Aurora, Illinois-based Old Second Bancorp Inc. will stop paying dividends to the Treasury Dept. under the TARP program. The arrangement highlights how non-Wall Street firms are still reliant on TARP and also the continued -- questionable-- generosity shown to even medium-sized banks. Old Second Bancorp was burned by real estate loans, and in January 2009, the Treasury Dept. propped up the bank with the purchase of $73 million in preferred shares. The bank continued to take a nose dive, losing $60.6 million in the first half of 2009.

The Environmental Protection Agency has started to regulate coal ash, a toxic byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity.  However, Micah Maidenberg of Progress Illinois suggests that the initial regulations are too limited. EPA did not deem coal ash as a hazardous material fit for regulation until December 2008, when 5.4 million cubic yards of ash spilled through the retaining wall of an Eastern Tennessee power plant. The sediment destroyed nearby homes and seeped into the Emory River, producing elevated levels of lead and thalium.

Health care workers at clinics serving California's poor are now officially helping float the state's precarious finances as a refusal to sign a budget approaches the two-month mark. About $300 million owed to a variety of clinics providing health care services to recipients of California's version of the federal Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, are receiving IOUs in lieu of payments.

Who knew?  Turns out there's an oil company called BP that is responsible for releasing petrochemicals into the environment without telling people.  James C. McKinley, Jr. reports in the New York Times on BP's latest travesty in Texas (they're good at creating disasters over in Louisiana, but in Texas they've outdone themselves -- it's all about being consistent). 

Some people who don’t use broadband think they’re not missing much. But for those whose homes, libraries, public safety networks and healthcare facilities will have broadband access because of the $1.8 billion the government awarded last week, it will make a huge difference. One of the larger of the 94 broadband projects funded last week – $28.8 million to Peoples Telephone Cooperative (PTC) in eastern Texas - will connect as many as 190 community institutions to broadband, benefitting as many as 241,000 people and 10,300 businesses, and creating an estimated 100 jobs. The grants and loans announced last week are only a portion of the $7 billion

Obama administration lawyers have asked the US Supreme Court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by eight states including California, New York City and three land trusts six years ago, seeking tougher restrictions on carbon dioxide releases by utilities than those set by the federal government, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko. Justice Department lawyers argue that federal primacy, in the form of recent EPA regulations, give the federal agency and Congress the sole power to regulate greenhouse gases.

The first of nine proposed major solar energy plants easily won the approval of California regulators Wednesday, reports David Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle -- as firms battle technical hurdles and race against the clock.

Paul Merrion of Crain's Chicago Business reports that Illinois will receive $121 million more in Dept. of Energy stimulus money to weatherize homes. Illinois had already received $121 million to weatherize 27,000 households -- the second federal payment was contingent on the state completing work on 30 percent of homes scheduled for renovation. Weatherization can mean insulating homes, paying for energy audits, or installing heating and cooling systems. It appears Illinois has turned around its weatherization program after an exceedingly rough start.