** Given the staffing and operations challenges, Delta Airlines announced that it will be reducing service by about 100 daily departures between July 1 and August 7, primarily in the United States and Latin America. Delta also said that it will “continue to proactively adjust select flights in the coming weeks.”
** The U.S. EPA’s longstanding budget shortfalls have complicated President Biden’s promise to boost the agency’s regulatory power, as Congress has yet to pass the funding increases Biden has asked for.
** The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission proposes a new rule to combat investment funds misleadingly labeled as environmentally conscious.
** U.S. environmental performance has fallen far behind other countries’ in a new report due to a lack of action under former President Trump, though most nations still aren’t on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
** An Australian mining company encounters opposition in North Carolina as it buys up land to develop a large lithium pit mine.
** Los Angeles’ city council votes to ban most natural gas appliances in new construction and require new buildings to be emissions-free, but does not set a timeline for the rules to take effect.
** Nevada conservationists and the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe urge federal officials to reroute the proposed GreenlinkWest transmission line to avoid disturbing public land and cultural resources.
** Demand for oil and refined products is falling as the economy starts bracing for a recession, said Ed Morse, Citigroup Inc.’s global head of commodity research.
World
** The UK and EU will ban ships transporting Russian oil from getting insurance, according to reports. One analyst said a similar sanction placed on Iran in 2012 was “the single most effective measure” taken against the country.
** Even as the European Union decided to reduce Russian crude oil imports by 90% by the end of the year, Italy has become the only country in Europe to increase them, an unintended consequence of EU sanctions against Russia.
** Germany’s parliament has set summer train fares at 9 euros per month in a bid to slash pollution and curb imports of Russian oil by spurring drivers to take public transit.
** A pipeline rupture in Libya is spewing thousands of barrels of oil into the desert, as workers scramble to seal off the leak, authorities said Wednesday. The Associated Press reported the damage to a land pipeline linking the Sarir oil field to the Tobruk terminal on the Mediterranean was the latest blow to Libya’s struggling oil industry, as renewed tensions again divide the chaos-stricken country.
