Category: Social issues

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Coal-fired electrical power and heating plant glows amid rosy polar stratus clouds in the polar night of January in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.

Arctic Treaty Nears 100 in Heated Climate

The Svalbard archipelago sits halfway between Norway and the North Pole with strategic access in the Barents Sea to vital sea lanes linking Russia, Western Europe and North America.

Retired chemist L. Philip Reiss, 79, with a photo of his grandfather, Winford Lee Lewis, the inventor of the chemical warfare agent lewisite. (Photo by Theo Emery).

The Scientists Who Created America’s War Gases

SONORA, Calif. — In a back room of L. Philip Reiss’ condominium, the retired chemical engineer has covered the walls and filled his drawers with mementos of a long life in science. In one corner, he’s hung keepsakes from years volunteering with a Boy Scout

James Morgan, 55, taken in a hearing room on March 25 ​at ​the ​Florida Correctional Institution​, near the town of Starke. He's been behind bars ​since he was 16, or ​for 38 years. His ​"​scheduled release date​"​ is​ in​ 2094. Photo by Amy Linn.

Dying Inside

Teenage murderer James Morgan didn’t go the electric chair. But is his life worth living? In 1987, when I first interviewed James Morgan, he was on death row in Florida, sentenced to die in the electric chair for murdering a widow in a small town

Johan Isak Oskal (quoted in story) feeds hungry reindeer from sack of specially-formulated feed since sheet of ice beneath snow prevents grazing in coastal pasture near Tromsø, Troms County, Norway, January 2015.

On The Edge: Reindeer and Climate Change

Female reindeer stands protectively beside her calf. Text and photos by Randall Hyman TROMSØ, NORWAY – “When I got married two years ago, we invited 1400 people,” Berit Oskal-Somby told me as we stood in an icy coastal pasture in northern Norway surrounded by 1500

The aftermath of the Lac-Megantic crude railcar explosion in 2013. (Credit: Axel Drainvile via Flickr)

BOOM: North America’s Explosive Oil-by-Rail Problem

U.S. regulators knew they had to act fast. A train hauling 2 million gallons of crude oil from North Dakota had exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people. Now they had to assure Americans a similar disaster wouldn’t happen south of the border, where the U.S. oil boom is sending