The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is about to release millions of feet of film containing aerial images that have been declassified. Such images have in the past been a boon to environmental research. It remains to be seen whether the contractors will charge prices that effectively prevent use by journalists and the public.
According to the AP, the Chemical Safety Board, which has been monitoring the testing, wanted further tests to confirm whether a fundamental design flaw may have contributed to failure of the blowout preventer's control pods
Sunshine Week is spearheaded by the American Society of News Editors with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Gridiron Club — with collaboration by a large number of coalition member groups.
Before picking up stories based on journals in the environmental sciences, reporters might pause to ask about those journals' policies on transparency and potential conflict of interest. And then ask about enforcement, and any relevant conflict declarations on the article in question.
Former National Freedom of Information director Coalition Charles N. Davis said the bill "puts Utah in a class of one, alone in an anti-democratic zone in which the governors enjoy almost carte blanche over what information they deign to share with the rabble.”
In the case of Milner v. Department of the Navy, the court rejected an expansive interpretation of the FOIA exemption on personnel matters. And in another FOIA case decided March 1, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations do not have a right of personal privacy that can prevent the federal government from disclosing records about them.
"Wyoming, famous for its crisp mountain air and breathtaking, far-as-the-eye-can-see vistas, is looking a little bit like smoggy Los Angeles these days because of a boom in natural gas drilling."
"The federal government has agreed to step up its efforts to force freighters sailing on the Great Lakes to begin treating their biologically contaminated ballast water discharges like any other industrial pollutant."
The boom in cellulosic ethanol that was predicted four years ago never happened. Or hasn't happened yet. The idea of making ethanol from all manner of plant material other than corn still promises major net environmental benefits -- unlike corn ethanol, which doesn't do much for the environment. But a lot depends on oil prices, electric car sales, financing, and the economies of scale.
"The federal rule protecting the nation's last remaining stretches of roadless wilderness will apply now to the largest and grandest of the national forests under a court ruling in Alaska, which threw out the exemption granted to the Tongass National Forest."
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