All posts by media-man

Climate

Maryland’s Climate Ambitions in Question After Turbulent Legislative Session

Amid budgetary and political pressure, Maryland’s latest legislative session delivered some moderate wins while weakening or delaying key mandates.

By Aman Azhar

Environmental leaders in Maryland are reeling from a challenging 2025 legislative session that left them questioning whether the state can still meet its clean energy and emissions reduction targets in the wake of policy rollbacks and carve-outs approved by lawmakers.

Climate

She Galvanized Her Community After a Company Contaminated It With ‘Forever Chemicals’

Laurene Allen of Merrimack, New Hampshire, dug into scientific research, organized neighbors and pressed officials to protect her community. She won a 2025 Goldman Environmental Prize for her tireless efforts.

Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by host Steve Curwood with Laurene Allen, a Goldman Environmental Prize winner.

Climate

Pacific island states urge rich countries to expedite plans to cut emissions

Developed countries pressed to submit national plans well before Cop30 as time runs out to avoid 1.5C temperature rise

Rich countries are dragging their feet on producing new plans to combat the climate crisis, thereby putting the poor into greater danger, some of the world’s most vulnerable nations have warned.

All governments are supposed to publish new plans this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, but so far only a small majority have done so, and some of the plans submitted have been inadequate to the scale of action needed.

Continue reading...
Climate

E-Bikes Would Be The Best Vehicle To Take Through A Stargate

Today, we’re going to take a trip through the Stargate, a really cool plot device in a fictional universe now owned by Amazon. But, for readers who are super serious (and fellow writers who have wooden objects lodged in the worst places), I’m going to promise right now that we’ll ... [continued]

The post E-Bikes Would Be The Best Vehicle To Take Through A Stargate appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Slate Electric Pickup Truck Might Be Less Than $20,000 With Incentives

The following Slate pickup truck video is about one of the more intriguing and exciting recent EV developments. With incentives, the $25,000 version of the truck might cost less than $20,000. That is, if the $7,500 US federal EV tax incentive is still available when the Slate truck becomes available ... [continued]

The post Slate Electric Pickup Truck Might Be Less Than $20,000 With Incentives appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Elon Can’t Save Tesla By Leaving Washington

With Tesla’s disastrous quarterly results, it’s pretty clear that the company is actually in trouble. Despite years of poor product decisions (the Cybertruck is stacking up on Tesla property due to lack of buyers—something we warned you about in 2019), the company’s good decisions on things like powertrains, reliable charging, ... [continued]

The post Elon Can’t Save Tesla By Leaving Washington appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

‘People can’t imagine something on that scale dying’: Anohni on mourning the Great Barrier Reef

The Anohni and the Johnsons singer is collaborating with marine scientists for two special shows at Sydney’s Vivid festival that will show the reef’s plight

Anohni Hegarty is about to go to the Great Barrier Reef for the first time. “I feel like I’m going to Auschwitz,” she says nervously. “On the one hand, I’m so excited to go because the landscape is so beautiful, and I know there’s going to be so much that’s gorgeous. And yet, I’m also scared.”

In a week, the British-born, New York-based avant garde singer of Anohni and the Johnsons is flying to Lizard Island, a paradise of powdery sands on the reef, 1,600km north-west of Brisbane. Its luxury villas and bluest of blue waters are a stark contrast to the grim nature of Anohni’s assignment: documenting the current state of the world’s biggest coral reef.

Continue reading...
Climate

As US Dismantles Its Climate Policy, Other World Leaders Seek Solidarity

The day after a U.S. State Department proposal to shutter its climate-negotiations office, the U.N.’s secretary-general said, “No group or government can stop the clean energy revolution.”

By Bob Berwyn

As the U.S. Department of State proposed this week to shut down its office managing international climate policy, leaders from several other countries that are key to the climate fight said they are determined to press ahead with global action.

Climate

​Switzerland Unveils World’s First Operational Solar Railway Project​

In a pioneering move toward sustainable energy, Switzerland has inaugurated the world’s first solar power plant installed directly on an active railway line. Developed by Swiss startup Sun-Ways, this innovative project features removable solar PV panels laid between the rails, marking a significant advancement in renewable energy integration within transportation ... [continued]

The post ​Switzerland Unveils World’s First Operational Solar Railway Project​ appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Third Of China’s Farms Sprayed By Drones, Marking Agricultural Revolution

A couple of years ago, while exploring the potential of agricultural drone technology through the lens of Hylio’s innovative spraying systems, I found myself wondering if these small machines could shift the massive inertia of global agriculture. At the time, Hylio was doing intriguing work, showcasing promising results with farmers ... [continued]

The post Third Of China’s Farms Sprayed By Drones, Marking Agricultural Revolution appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Riding On The Freebee: Public Transportation Can Be Electrifying

When we moved to our retirement home, hubby and I decided we could make do with one vehicle. Most of our appointments can be synced, and, as we’re both freelancers, the need to commute has vanished. That being said, there are the rare occasions where life interferes and we have ... [continued]

The post Riding On The Freebee: Public Transportation Can Be Electrifying appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Climate

Behind the Scenes: Communities Around ‘Last-Mile Warehouses’ Struggle With Online Shopping Boom’s Pollution

A number of facilities have popped up around NYC to help accommodate the online shopping surge. Many environmental justice communities pay the toll of their pollution.

By Kiley Price

Online shopping has reached epic proportions in the United States—and Manhattan is its beating heart. More than 2.4 million packages are delivered to New York City every weekday, and around 90 percent of goods are transported into or around the city by trucks. 

Climate

Meet The Robot Replacing Four Workers At A Time On Solar Projects

At a dusty solar site outside Culcairn, New South Wales, a tracked robot methodically rolled between rows of steel posts, hoisting large photovoltaic panels with a vacuum arm and placing them onto pre-aligned mounting structures. In the brutal Australian sun, where manual laborers need regular hydration breaks and safety protocols ... [continued]

The post Meet The Robot Replacing Four Workers At A Time On Solar Projects appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Uncategorized

In DOGE’s Hunt For Imaginary Censors, It Kills Actual Anti-Censorship Research

The people most loudly (misleadingly) complaining about censorship just… helped enable actual censorship. Not metaphorical censorship, not “they won’t let me tweet slurs” censorship, but literal “we’re going to stop research into fighting actual government censorship” censorship.

It’s painfully stupid, but that’s just what we get with the folks running the government these days.

This all starts with a fundamental misunderstanding: the belief that any research into “disinformation” must itself be a censorship program. This is a bit like assuming that studying cancer is actually a plot to give people cancer, but this is the state of the crazy world we live in today. It ignores the rather obvious fact that disinformation and foreign influence campaigns do exist, and that studying them usually aims to counter them with more speech, not less.

But you will never get that through to the truly brain-wormed among the MAGA-Musk cinematic universe. Just recently, Elon announced that “several more censorship organizations will be released” after a Steve Bannon acolyte falsely posted to ExTwitter that USAID’s non-classified efforts to fund digital literacy efforts was about censorship (she claimed the programs were “declassified,” as she’s too ignorant to know that the “U” in the description means they were always unclassified).

Of course, digital literacy has nothing to do with “censorship” at all. It’s not about “getting news solely from legacy sources.” It simply is about teaching people how to understand what they’re reading (like knowing when something is unclassified already, rather than declassified) and understanding how to recognize when you’re being lied to.

Either way, in pursuit of dumbing down Americans and making them much more susceptible to foreign influence campaigns, last week the NSF got around to pulling a bunch of grants that were (often loosely) related to mis- and disinformation. NSF put out a statement claiming these cuts are about better aligning their efforts.

Awards that are not aligned with NSF’s priorities have been terminated, including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and misinformation/disinformation.

While the targeting of DEI initiatives has received significant attention, the wholesale elimination of mis- and disinformation research represents an equally concerning development.

While apparently 430 such grants have been unceremoniously canceled, one academic forwarded me a spreadsheet listing out about 50 such canceled grants. I don’t want to release the whole thing, but while NSF’s email to academics claimed that each cut was carefully vetted, that’s obviously bullshit.

The most obvious example of how haphazard and stupid these cuts are is that they cut Associate Professor Eric Wustrow’s CAREER grant on “Combating Censorship from Within the Network.” You can kinda tell that some DOGE bro likely did a keyword search on “censorship” and probably just killed all such projects. But if anyone actually read even just the description of the project, they’d realize that this was about countering censorship through technology. You’d think that’s the sort of thing that the DOGE folks would support? Unless of course, they actually support censorship. (Also, canceling CAREER grants is utter bullshit, as they’re specifically designed to help out early career professors, who will be massively harmed by this).

Other canceled grants include one on “empowering fact checkers” because we can’t have that. There’s a canceled grant about “enhancing attribution, detection, and explanation” of foreign influence campaigns (you can see why MAGA might not like that one very much). Also a program on “using markets to address manipulated information online.” You’d think that the “more speech” crew would like that sorta thing, but apparently not.

The impact of these cuts will be profound: reducing America’s ability to counter actual censorship, understand foreign influence operations, and maintain technological leadership in these critical areas.

We will all be dumber because of this nonsense.

The whole thing is so stupid that even the Trump-appointed head of the NSF resigned just after these cuts were announced.

“I believe that I have done all I can to advance the mission of the agency and feel that it is time to pass the baton to new leadership,” writes Sethuraman Panchanathan, a computer scientist who was nominated to lead NSF by then-President Donald Trump in December 2019 and was confirmed by the Senate in August 2020. “I am deeply grateful to the presidents for the opportunity to serve our nation.”

Although Panchanathan, known as Panch, didn’t give a reason for his sudden departure, orders from the White House to accept a 55% cut to the agency’s $9 billion budget next year and fire half its 1700-person staff may have been the final straws in a series of directives Panchanathan felt he could no longer obey.

As Science notes, DOGE showed up in the NSF offices a few weeks ago and basically just started slashing stuff without much concern or understanding. And Panchanathan gives a little nod towards that nonsense in his resignation letter:

Panchanathan refers obliquely to that draconian reduction in his resignation letter. “While NSF has always been an efficient agency,” he writes, “we still took [on] the challenge of identifying other possible efficiencies and reducing our commitments to serve the scientific community even better.”

This is, like so much from this administration, needless destruction of important American infrastructure and knowledge base through ignorance, anger and stupidity. We will all be worse for it, but thank goodness, no one will ever have to face being… digitally literate in the Trump universe.

Climate

Thank you for your support of The 89 Percent Project!

Dear colleague,

We’re so grateful to all the journalists and newsrooms who supported Covering Climate Now’s effort this week to spotlight the huge majority of the world’s public that wants governments to do more to fight climate change. Our Joint Coverage Week doesn’t formally conclude until this Monday, April 28, but before the weekend, we want to say THANK YOU to folks who published or republished 89 Percent stories, the outlets that covered our initiative, and to everyone who joined the #The89Percent conversation on social media.

Our community showed up in a major way this week, and, together, we think we made a splash!

CCNow started The 89 Percent Project because it’s been for far too long that institutions, including the press, have treated climate change as a niche concern. We’ve always known that conventional wisdom underestimates the public’s alarm about climate change, but even we were struck by research finding that between 80% and 89% of the global public expects more from their governments. Especially at a time of rising tensions and fraught political divisions worldwide, we were amazed that such a large number of people could agree on anything! Yet study after study showed the same, and so we became convicted that journalists have a responsibility to help audiences understand the fact of this silent climate majority — which CCNow co-founders Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope called a prospective “superpower in the fight against global heating” in a Guardian op-ed earlier this week.

The message was loud and clear this week, in coverage from every continent and in outlets both big and small. Thanks especially to our partners at The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Welle, TIME, NBC News, Telemundo, The Nation, Crooked Media, Canada’s National Observer, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, Italy’s Corriere della Sera, and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, without whom this Joint Coverage Week would not have been possible.

If you value work like The 89 Percent Project, donate to support Covering Climate Now in our mission to improve climate change storytelling worldwide.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: The 89 Percent Project doesn’t stop here. As we said at the outset, this is a yearlong initiative, and in the coming weeks and months we’ll continue to work with partners to lift the shroud on the world’s enormous climate consensus. Expect events (like “The Future of Climate Activism” webinar we help this Tuesday), training sessions, newsmaker interviews, and more, as well as a second 89 Percent Joint Coverage Week in October, in the leadup to COP30 in Brazil. You can keep up with the project at our web home, 89percent.org, and by following CCNow on social media, on BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Threads. If you have questions about The 89 Percent Project, as always, you can reach us at editors@coveringclimatenow.org.

Thanks for reading and, as always, thank you for your commitment to the climate story.

Onward!

The CCNow Team

The post Thank you for your support of The 89 Percent Project! appeared first on Covering Climate Now.

Climate

Lectric eBikes Lightning Deals: Premium Rides, Shocking Prices (Limited Time Only!)

Ready to ride smarter and spend less? Lectric eBikes is turning up the voltage with limited-time Lightning Deals — slashing prices on its best-selling e-bikes and gear. Whether you’re a daily commuter, trail explorer, or cargo hauler, these deals pack serious value into powerful rides. If you’ve been holding out ... [continued]

The post Lectric eBikes Lightning Deals: Premium Rides, Shocking Prices (Limited Time Only!) appeared first on CleanTechnica.

News-tech

Accessibility: Requirements, Not Features

Shipping fast often means shrinking scope — but accessibility deserves permanence, not compromise. At The New York Times, product managers embedded it into how our teams think, build, and deliver using the power of the three P’s: People, Process and Products.

Illustration by Klaus Kremmerz

By Erica Vendetti, Rachel Dixon, David Leininger and Matt Argomaniz

As Product Managers, we’re always trying to deepen how we meet the needs of our users and the future of our business. To deliver the features our users want, we’re always thinking about both who uses our products and how our products are used. For our Platform Product Managers, that can mean thinking about the needs of our colleagues — other Product Managers, Data Analysts, Program Managers, Engineers, and Designers. And for our User-Facing Product Managers, that can mean thinking about our readers. To make products accessible to all, accessibility should be a requirement, not a feature.

But when you build at the speed of news, teams must streamline features as they build. To launch a feature quickly, teams continuously refine the scope of feature development. And defining what’s a feature vs a requirement is a delicate dance for Agile teams. Shifting our teams’ perspective so accessibility is a requirement in all development work is a major undertaking. To become champions of accessibility in tech, we focused on the three P’s: People, Process and Products.

People: Leverage Internal Experts, Groups and Individuals to Share Knowledge

The New York Times aims to foster a culture that enables our mission, business and people to thrive. Finding both the time and opportunity to share knowledge is a top down priority, and the company has several staff-led groups that work to connect and uplift diverse perspectives. Three of these groups — which are invested in making technology more inclusive and accessible — came together to share knowledge and best practices:

  • The Product function’s DEI Speaker Series Squad, which organizes discussions around building accessible products and being inclusive product managers,
  • Women+ in Tech, which focuses on diversity in the technology, and
  • The Accessibility Team, which empowers teams to build world leading digital products that are accessible from the start.

Sometimes, the key to success is simply connecting the right people. By leveraging these internal communities, we can build on existing efforts and share knowledge quickly in multiple spaces. This approach helps us tap into the time people were already dedicating for learning and a large engaged community of folks already interested in inclusive practices.

Process: Train Your Teams on Web Accessibility Development Standards

Making digital resources accessible means taking steps to prevent and eliminate obstacles that limit some users from fully using our digital products and tools. When it comes to technology, that means being able to support diverse abilities — including temporary, situational, and age related disabilities. And, of course, improving accessibility improves the user experience for everyone! If you’ve ever increased the brightness on your screen or used dark mode, you’re benefiting from accessibility tooling.

To share our knowledge about accessibility requirements, we hosted internal talks, certifications, and created self-guided syllabus learning for various levels. In our first talk, we shared four tips to help standardize accessibility across any product. These tips can easily be added as acceptance criteria from Product to Engineering to make accessible features.

Four tips to standardize accessibility for any product. (1) The heading hierarchy must follow a logical sequence. (2) Button and link text must make sense on their own so the call to action is clear. (3) Keyboard only navigation must be fully functional with tab, shift+tab, space and arrow keys. (4) Use voice over with your product to improve navigation for blind readers.

In our second talk, we shared how to adapt these tips for Platform teams. This helped us build cohesion across the Product and Engineering functions. We were now effectively bridging gaps between user-interface accessibility and internal tooling accessibility.

In our final session, we organized a self-led certificate program that was open to all staff during Maker Week. Maker Week is an annual event where staff can take a break from their usual work and focus on creative self-directed projects. Our Product experts shared steps for how to perform an accessibility audit for web-based products. Hosting the training at the same time that folks were already building a lot of new tools and applications meant that people also had space to explore accessibility requirements. It was a win-win!

Accessibility Audit report indicating what tests passed, failed, or not yet run

Product: Create Internal Tools to Standardize Accessible Features

Our technology teams have invested in creating an internal Accessibility Guide, a resource maintained by a team of internal specialists who monitor Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards. This guide outlines how designers, engineers and product managers across all platforms can meet WCAG 2.2 AA standards.

Times Product Language accessibility guidance on writing good accessible names for elements

By sharing this guide in all of our learning sessions, we’ve removed one of the biggest barriers — finding the right resources. And because accessibility needs can change with each project, the Product Function’s DEI Speaker Series Squad wanted to make sure there was a sustainable way for people to continue their journey. As folks learn how to use the accessibility audit tool, they can volunteer to become a team and department accessibility lead by joining the Accessibility Champions Program. This internal program has three levels to guide learning from general interest all the way to subject matter experts.

The Product function’s DEI Speaker Series Squad, Women+ In Tech, and the Accessibility Team are among many internal champions aiming to create spaces where curious learners and teams can make technology even more inclusive. This is just our starting point — we’re excited to keep building and sharing more together.

Accessibility: Requirements, Not Features was originally published in NYT Open on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Journalism

Help for reporters covering immigration

Editor’s Note: API is pleased to announce that next week, along with the regular Need to Know editions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you will receive a special new offering on Thursday, May 1 — the debut of the Need to Know: Training Edition.

This new installment is an expansion of our Need to Know newsletter, designed to highlight training opportunities from across the industry. Delivered on the first Thursday of every month, it will serve as a valuable resource for discovering professional development to support your continued growth.

If you have a training event or professional development opportunity you’d like to see in a future edition, please share it through our submission form. Thank you for being a part of the API community — we’re excited to bring you this new resource.

Tips and tools for the immigration beat 

Covering immigration and immigrant communities these days involves telling stories of fear, as the Portland Oregonian did this week. It involves detailing the tactics of ICE, like the Charlottesville Daily Progress did with a courthouse raid that has sparked outrage. And then there is documenting the inexplicable, like a New York Times piece on a man in Detroit who disappeared altogether.

Because none of this is easy, the journalism support world is offering resources to help.

This week the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press published a legal guide for journalists with detailed information on accessing records about immigration proceedings and enforcement actions. It is available in English and Spanish.

For a better understanding of statistics, Journalist’s Resource has an explainer from Syracuse professor Austin Kocher on how to read arrest and detention numbers.

The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently explored how to responsibly report on immigration without heightening community tensions.

Finally, one resource to note from API: A year ago, we published an article on moral injury in journalism. The work of the preeminent researcher in this field, University of Toronto psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein, stemmed from his study of journalists covering migrant communities. Today it’s more relevant than ever.

News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> How we’re battling Trump’s science cuts across small-town America (Nature) 

At a time when funding for scientific research is being drastically cut, neuroscientist Jessica Cantlon, who researches the mathematical-processing capabilities of human children and other young primates at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is running a project for researchers across the country to get in touch with local newspapers to argue for science funding and why it is important to their communities. The idea behind Science Homecoming is that scientists get in touch with the local newspaper where they grew up.

—

Culture & Inclusion

>> Guidance for journalists looking to beat their fear of public speaking (International Journalists’ Network) 

Public speaking is a critical part of many journalists’ jobs. But a lot of people fear it, writes Beryn Orera. She has come up with eight strategies for journalists to get past public speaking jitters. Among them: Practice speaking extemporaneously, rather than using a script. One expert told Orera that it’s important for people to remember that “the audience is there to gain valuable insights from you, not to judge you.”

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> New from API: News leaders: Embrace local identity and history to create added value

People often have an endless reservoir of love and care for the places they live and the neighborhoods they call home. As a result, newsrooms that lean into local identity can add value by helping people make informed decisions, building connections between the past and present, enriching conversations through complexity or nuance, and bridging individual differences. This is one takeaway from our local news summit in Nashville earlier this month on how local news organizations can build on their communities’ history and assets.

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Revenue & Resilience

>> Join us: Proven digital transformation strategies to try at your news organization

We’re hosting an hour-long discussion and interactive debrief at 1 p.m. ET May 1 on the tools and frameworks newsrooms can use in digital transformation. In this conversation, attendees will hear from local news leaders who worked on successful digital transformation strategies to launch new products, increase revenue streams, hold live journalism events and strengthen workplace culture at their organizations. Learn more and sign up.

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What else you need to know

🎤 ‘Do you consider yourself a journalist?’ CNN meets MAGA media at White House

📝 Former VOA reporter Liam Scott has started a Substack newsletter on press freedom (The Press Freedom Report)

⚖️  Q&A: Bill Grueskin on The New York Times beating Sarah Palin (again) (CJR)

✂️ Colorado Springs Indy lays off staff and transfers ownership amid shock statement (Inside the News in Colorado)

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Weekend reads

+ Columbia Journalism Review faces the kind of crisis it usually covers (The New York Times)

+ On ‘secret’ radio stations nationwide, a decades-old news service has survived the move to digital (Nieman Lab)

+ How Donald Trump revealed Jeff Bezos’ true self (Politico)

+ Podcast: Warwick Sabin, CEO of Deep South Today, on journalism, civic leadership & broadband in the South (The Fiber Podcast)

The post Help for reporters covering immigration appeared first on American Press Institute.

Climate

How Will Trump’s Effort to Revitalize Coal Play Out in the Nation’s Most Productive Coal Fields?

Western tribal groups and environmentalists want to defend the recent ban on permitting of new coal mines in the Powder River Basin, but Trump and Wyoming covet a coal comeback.

By Jake Bolster

On a cool morning in late February, Mark Fix was up before the sun to watch the Tongue River on his ranch in southeast Montana. He was concerned that a breaching ice dam could put his cattle and property in the path of rushing water carrying plates of ice the size of a dinner table.  

Climate

The World’s Biggest Meat Company Gets the Greenlight to Go Public on the New York Stock Exchange

Advocacy groups have pushed regulators to block JBS’ bid, noting its history of corruption charges, illegal deforestation and unfulfilled climate promises. Federal approval came after a big donation to Trump’s inauguration.

By Georgina Gustin

The world’s largest meat company, Brazil-based JBS, has sought a listing on the New York Stock Exchange for more than a decade, but the company, which has long been accused of links to illegal deforestation in the Amazon, was stymied by corruption charges.