"The canal would allow passage for the largest ships on the water, but cut through wetlands, forests and the region's largest freshwater lake — and environmentalists worry about the consequences."
After a judge refused to reverse most of the secrecy ruling around the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster caused by Massey Energy's safety violations, including indictment of the company's former CEO, media outlets appealed. Now a coalition of many more media groups, led by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, have filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing the secrecy ruling as unconstitutional.
"The National Park Service announced yesterday that it had more than 292.8 million recreational visitors in 2014 -- a higher annual total than any time in its nearly 100-year history."
The National Park Service has been documenting the acoustic environment in National Parks for years. But in addition to the sounds of nature -- Coyotes in Colorado, a hummingbird in Washington State, elk from Sand Dunes National Park -- the microphones also capture the sounds of civilization -- such as sirens.
"President Barack Obama is designating three new national monuments for protection as historic or ecologically significant sites, including the Pullman neighborhood in Chicago where African-American railroad workers won a historic labor agreement."
"Just north of Iliamna Lake in southwestern Alaska is an empty expanse of marsh and shrub that conceals one of the world’s great buried fortunes: A mile-thick layer of virgin ore said to contain at least 6.7 million pounds — or $120 billion worth — of gold."
"A federal judge on Friday (Feb. 13) dismissed a controversial wetlands damage lawsuit filed by the east bank levee authority against more than 80 oil, gas and pipeline companies, ruling that the authority failed to make a valid claim against the energy firms."
Congress keeps secret the top-notch nonpartisan explainers from the Congressional Research Service. Or tries to. Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Government Secrecy Project, you can read the reports your tax dollars paid for below.
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