People & Population

"Low-income Black and Latino communities will be pummeled by the Trump administration’s changes to the nation’s permitting rules for federal infrastructure projects, according to environmental justice leaders across the country."

"On the eve of a new coronavirus reporting system this week, data disappeared from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as hospitals began filing information to a private contractor or their states instead. A day later, an outcry — including from other federal health officials — prompted the Trump administration to reinstate that dashboard and another daily CDC report on the pandemic."

"The decision to suspend seasonal visas is expected to hurt forestry firms as well as state and federal governments."

"Tuomas Siilasjoki and Minna Näkkäläjärvi say they were taken by surprise when a mobile drill rig one day appeared in the horizon. Nobody had asked them about exploring for minerals inside their siida, a reindeer foraging area, in northern Finland. The Sámi families here in Tarvantovaara wilderness area fear the world's hunger for metals to ramp up the green economy will destroy their indigenous way of life."

"Formosa Plastics, a Taiwanese plastics company, intends to build a complex St. James Parish, Louisiana, a region already known as "Cancer Alley." Environmental activist Anne Rolfes faces criminal charges for a protest action she took to call attention to the company's history of harm." "From Southeast Asia to the United States, activists have called attention in recent years to the harmful impact of chemical companies such as Formosa Plastics Corporation, a Taiwanese petrochemical company that operates throughout the world, including the US."

"Millions of acres in the eastern half of Oklahoma remain part of a Native American reservation for criminal law purposes, the Supreme Court said today in a sharply divided ruling that could have implications for oil and gas development in the state."

"A new genetic study suggests that Polynesians made an epic voyage to South America 800 years ago."

Racial disparities in who contracts the virus have played out in big cities like Milwaukee and New York, but also in smaller metropolitan areas like Grand Rapids, Mich., where the Bradleys live."