By Jeff Biggers In a move that should electrify the clean energy movement across the country, the tireless champions with the Chicago Clean Power Coalition have announced that Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of multinational giant Edison International, will soon shut down the Windy City’s two Model-T-era coal-fired plants. The historic victory, after a decade-long battle, […]

By Environment News Service The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented 15 “near-misses” at 13 U.S. nuclear plants during 2011 and evaluates the response of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to each event in a report released today. The second in an annual series of reports, “The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety 2011 Report: Living […]

By Allison Kilkenny / In These Times Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings last night posted a story on an internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street,” dated October of last year. The five-page report, part of five million newly leaked documents obtained by Wikileaks, sums up the history of the movement and assesses its […]

By Jeremy Hance, Mongabay In a bid to fast-track industrial projects, India’s Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is opening up 25 percent of forests that were previously listed as “no-go” areas, reports the Hindustan Times. The designation will allow between 30 and 50 new industrial projects to go ahead rapidly, including road construction and coal mining. […]

By National Geographic A hole was blasted in the base of the 125-foot-tall Condit Dam on the White Salmon River in Washington. In less than 2 hours, the reservoir behind the dam drained completely and the White Salmon flowed unimpeded by a dam for the first time in 100 years. From YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LxMHmw3Z-U

By Ignacio Cirio / Translated by Jim Rudolf Eight million hectares, half the surface area of Uruguay: That is the combined area that the government of Fernando Lugo is hoping to investigate, to determine if the lands are “ill-gotten,” whose title deeds could be forged or faked or simply seized from the times of the […]

By Agence France-Presse People from the wealthy upper classes are more likely than poorer folks to break laws while driving, take candy from children and lie for financial gain, said a US study on Monday. The seven-part study by psychologists at the University of California Berkeley and the University of Toronto analyzed people’s behavior through […]

By Stephen Leahy / Inter Press Service Rising temperatures are drying out northern forests and peatlands, producing bigger and more intense fires. And this will only get much worse as the planet heats up from the use of ever larger amounts of fossil fuels, scientists warned last week at the end of a major science […]

By Jeremy Hance, Mongabay Less than a year after being pulled off the Endangered Species Act (ESA), gray wolves (Canis lupus) in the western U.S. are facing an onslaught of hunting. The hunting season for wolves has just closed in Montana with 160 individuals killed, around 75 percent of 220-wolf kill quota for the state. […]

By Gáldu The Phulbari open-pit coal mine in Bangladesh could displace hundreds of thousands of people and lead to the violation of fundamental human rights of entire villages of Santal, Munda, Mahili and Pahan indigenous peoples, a group of United Nations independent experts warned today. “The Government of Bangladesh must ensure that any policy concerning […]