Trump appointee who called Muslims ‘maggots’ booted from DOE

A massage therapist with no apparent experience of energy policy was terminated from the Department of Energy after it was revealed that he has a habit of making racially charged comments about Muslims and former President Barack Obama over social media. After working as a Trump campaign operative in New Hampshire, Sid Bowdidge was employed as an “assistant” to Energy Secretary Rick Perry shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, despite having no relevant experience, two employees at the nuclear weapons agency told BuzzFeed News on Friday .

Globe-trotting pollutants can last longer and travel much farther than previously predicted

A new way of looking at how pollutants ride through the atmosphere has quadrupled the estimate of global lung cancer risk from a pollutant caused by combustion, to a level that is now double the allowable limit recommended by the World Health Organization. The findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition online, showed that tiny floating particles can grow semi-solid around pollutants, allowing them to last longer and travel much farther than what previous global climate models predicted.