JoAnn Valenti reports on the best of the 2012 Sundance Film Fest offerings on pesticides, climate change, nuclear power, interactive art installations, and more. © Photo by Yoni Brook of women on a dying lake in India, topic of "Valley of Saints," co-winner of the Sloan science award and a Sundance award winner.
InvestigateWest's Robert McClure gets into the (clean water) act by asking, "Four decades later, is our water cleaner?" You'll find shocking answers and a flood of ways to localize this issue.
The system was developed by the Sunlight Foundation, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and the Center for Responsive Politics. Just paste in some text or the Web address of an online article, and within seconds Poligraft supplies much of the missing context.
The rebellion against commercial and subscription-only publishers over public access to articles based on taxpayer-funded research is gaining ground. The Directory — free, searchable and online — already includes some 819742, full-text, scientific or scholarly articles in 7885 journals.
A federal judge has denied BP's bid to see 21 e-mails and other documents sent between the White House and other federal agencies. More chilling, perhaps, was BP's effort to get e-mails sent by two private-sector scientists in an apparent effort to discredit their work.
A new report from the IEA includes guidelines emphasizing transparency and the monitoring of environmental and social impacts. That includes full disclosure of fracking fluid ingredients and testing of baseline water and air conditions before drilling begins.
A company wants to mine Virginia's major uranium deposit so the state formed a multi-agency panel to study ending the three-decade ban on uranium mining. That panel hired a consulting firm that critics say was stacked with experts affiliated with the nuclear industry.
The JD said that individuals have a First Amendment right to record police officers in the public performance of their duties. It also said police can not seize or destroy such recordings without a warrant and due process.
Claims of trade secrecy — often unsubstantiated — are a huge barrier to environmental reporters and others trying to find the truth about chemicals that may harm human health and the environment. But the FBI's billboards urge Americans to be vigilant against corporate insiders who may appear suspicious, and presumably to turn them in.
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