New York and 13 other states are suing US Environmental Protection Agency claiming it violated the Clean Air Act in revising ozone pollution standards in March, the New York attorney general said on Wednesday. "The EPA is charged with protecting the environment, yet the Bush administration has repeatedly used it as a tool for facilitating pollution instead of combating it," New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a release.

European Union lawmakers backed a watered-down law on "green crime" on Monday that would make dumping toxic waste or illegally transporting hazardous materials a criminal offence throughout the bloc. The draft law obliges the EU's 27 member states to treat and punish as criminal acts a list of nine offences ranging from harming protected plants or species to unlawful trade in ozone-depleting substances. But it does not set EU-wide sanctions to the dismay of environmentalists who doubt it will have much impact.

International laws: Even as 1987 Montreal Protocol laid down rules to banish ozone depleting substances (ODS), several of the substitutes that came into use were GHGs. These were covered under the Climate Change Convention. The Kyoto Protocol included six GHGs and committed developed countries to mandatory emission reduction targets of these gases.

The rule of unintended consequences threatens to strike again. Some researchers have suggested that injecting sulfur compounds into the atmosphere might help ease global warming by increasing clouds and haze that would reflect sunlight. After all, they reason, when volcanoes spew lots of sulfur, months or more of cooling often follows. But a new study warns that injecting enough sulfur to reduce warming would wipe out the Arctic ozone layer and delay recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by as much as 70 years.

Short-term exposure to smog, or ozone, is clearly linked to premature deaths that should be taken into account when measuring the health benefits of reducing air pollution, a National Academy of Sciences review concludes. Mother's diet during pregnancy influences baby's sex: studyChemical key that could stop cancer in tracks

The us government has tightened federal air quality standards for smog-forming ozone, but not to the extent recommended by the us Environmental Protection Agency's scientific advisers.