"The University of Massachusetts said it will divest from direct fossil-fuel holdings in its endowment, without specifying the total amount of its investment."
"A fire from spent fuel stored at a U.S. nuclear power plant could have catastrophic consequences, according to new simulations of such an event."
"On a cold rainy day last fall, dozens of people gathered in a plaza across the street from New Jersey's state Capitol. They held press conferences and slept overnight in lawn chairs."
"Donald Trump would be 'highly unlikely' to be able to renegotiate the global accord on climate change if elected U.S. president, the U.N.'s climate chief said on Wednesday, as doing so would require the agreement of 195 countries."
"Voters at Exxon Mobil Corp's annual meeting on Wednesday approved a measure to let minority shareholders nominate outsiders for seats on the board, meaning a climate activist could eventually become a director at the world's largest publicly traded oil company."
Jim Holzer, head of the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), a post often called the FOIA Ombudsman, has decided to step down after less than a year on the job. Some Freedom of Information Act advocates are seeing this as a discouraging sign.
The multibillion-dollar Green Climate Fund, established after the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks to help developing countries adapt, offers many kinds of news to environmental reporters. So controversies around the fund's information disclosure policies are important.
The U.S. Department of the Interior is not winning many awards for openness. A House subcommittee recently took up the complaint that Interior's Office of the Solicitor would not even honor the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) ombudsman's office with a response to repeated letters.
Open government groups have started a 50-day countdown to the law's 50th anniversary. It remains to be seen whether Congress can send President Obama a fix-FOIA bill by that date. Image: © Clipart.com.
The Senate-passed bill contains an explicit exemption from permits and fees for newsgathering. A House energy bill, now going to conference to be reconciled with the Senate bill, contains no newsgathering exemption. But that's not the end of the story. Image courtesy of NPS.
