"Imperiled polar bears will see a population crash in most parts of the Arctic Ocean if global greenhouse gas emissions continue at current rates, causing accelerated melting of the sea ice the bruins depend on for survival, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday."
"The West is baking under a heat dome that has sent temperatures soaring to historically high levels, further drying out soils and priming the region for fast-spreading wildfires. The heat wave is noteworthy for its severity, extent and duration."
MARYVILLE, Tenn. -- "A CSX tanker car carrying acrylonitrile caught fire just after midnight Thursday morning forcing the evacuation of more than 5,000 people in an expanding evacuation zone last listed as a 2-mile radius around the site."
The WatchDog has long whined about Congress' mystifying refusal to let taxpayers read Congressional Research Service reports the taxpayers have paid for. A June 17, 2015, editorial in the New York Times called the situation "absurd," expressing hope that a new director of the Library of Congress (home of the CRS) would manage to get the policy changed.
The mandate for disclosure of oil train information set by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in a May 2014 emergency order still exists. But getting that information will be harder — and a battle that must be fought by reporters and public safety advocates on a state-by-state basis.
The issue re-ignited recently when astrophysicist and climate change denier Willie Soon, affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, was revealed to have taken funding — but not disclosed it — from fossil fuel interests. Now the Smithsonian Institution has said it will tighten its guidelines for disclosure of funding by its researchers.
At the Spills of National Significance (SONS) Draft Communications Strategy forum on June 8, and in a June 30 letter, SEJ urged SONS communicators to release data fully and promptly, to acknowledge uncertainties and gaps, and to give journalists good access to officials, experts and places.
"Toilets are taken for granted in the industrialized West, but still are a luxury for a third of the world's people who have no access to them, according to a report by the World Health Organization and UNICEF."
"A federal judge ruled Tuesday that a Maui County ban on the cultivation of genetically engineered crops is pre-empted by federal and state law and invalid."
"Six states are scheduled to increase their gas taxes on July 1 to help pay for transportation projects, according to the Citizens for Tax Justice and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)."
