"After several weeks of study and debate, U.S. health officials concluded that infection with the Zika virus during pregnancy causes the birth defect microcephaly, a finding that experts hope will refocus attention on efforts to stop infections and prompt U.S. lawmakers to fund emergency prevention efforts."
Thanks to the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, we can share some recent CRS reports of interest to environmental journalists.
For environmental reporters, pipelines are a frequent source of major news stories. Enterprising journalists may want to find nearby pipelines before they leak or blow up. The National Pipeline Mapping System is a basic tool that can help.
Access to legislatures is critical to journalistic coverage of government — at least if government is to be accountable and democratic. So it caused a stir when Arizona House Speaker David Gowan (R) banned reporters from the floor unless they passed extensive background checks.
The Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) lobbied successfully to pass and preserve the "Halliburton Loophole," which exempts the oil and gas industry from the law requiring disclosure of toxic fracking chemicals.
Reflexive secrecy has been a hallmark of government efforts to deal with highly hazardous chemical facilities in recent decades. Another reminder of that secrecy came in an April 11, 2016, piece in Greenwire by Sam Pearson. Photo: The fertilizer plant in West, Texas, that exploded in 2013, killing 15 people, by Shane Torgerson, courtesy of Wikipedia.
"Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has a new line of attack against Hillary Clinton tailor-made for New York voters: that she is too soft on hydraulic fracturing."
"Institutions managing $6 trillion in assets plan to back a call for U.S. oil major ExxonMobil to disclose the impact of climate change policy on its business, one of the organizers of the vote said on Tuesday."
"Flint residents aren’t using enough water to pull necessary chemical treatments through the city’s system, hindering efforts to get water up to safety standards in a community where residents are afraid to use their taps and loathe to pay for what comes out of them.
Although the past six months have produced improvements, recent testing by Virginia Tech researchers, including expert Marc Edwards, shows contamination still at problem levels.
"A new report calls into question — again — California’s handling of this winter’s historic natural gas leak, this time suggesting that regulators and the gas company are purposely scaring the community and legislature into putting the storage facility back online."
