"An independent government watchdog will investigate the Trump administration's alleged political interference with public health agencies, Democratic senators announced Monday."
A battery of polluting industry spewing toxic pollution and a small town of residents south of Baton Rouge unbowed by their circumstance make for the ingredients of a powerful team investigative project, newly named to the top prize in the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 2020 reporting awards. Inside Story offers a look behind “Polluter’s Paradise” in a Q&A with reporter Tristan Baurick.
"U.S. coronavirus cases are rising again, driven by rapid transmission in Midwestern states and sparking fears that a forewarned wave of infections this fall and winter has begun."
The narrative around the ocean should become a more hopeful one, argues former NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco. As evidence at the Society of Environmental Journalists’ recent virtual conference, Lubchenco cites a top-level international analysis that suggests the ocean can play a positive role in everything from reducing climate change to securing the future of food. Find out more.
"Thousands of farmed minks in Wisconsin and Utah have died from the novel coronavirus, which experts say they got from humans."
"The Trump administration mismanaged its efforts to provide relief to oil and gas producers during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, failing to ensure aid went to those that needed it, according to a new congressional report.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog office of Congress, said the government flouted its own goals when giving struggling producers a break this spring on payments to the government for oil and gas pumped from federal lands.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says the coronavirus can be spread through airborne particles that can linger in the air "for minutes or even hours" — even among people who are more than 6 feet apart."
"Businesses that have paid a collective $52 million in penalties for environmental offenses received up to $32 million in PPP money."
"Clothes recycling is the pressure-release valve of fast fashion, and it’s breaking under COVID-19 curbs. The multi-billion-dollar trade in second-hand clothing helps prevent the global fashion industry’s growing pile of waste going straight to landfill, while keeping wardrobes clear for next season’s designs."
"The Department of Health and Human Services decided to award a second $10.2 million, six-month contract to TeleTracking Technologies even though Congressional committees are investigating the process by which the contract was awarded and the HHS Inspector General is looking at how the company is securing the information it is gathering, an NPR Investigation has learned."
