Science

Low-income California communities concerned with environmental justice have launched a 21-point "Environmental Justice Movement Declaration." Their position is a challenge to the policies of Gov.

When the dangers of smoking first became widely known, cigarette companies secretly hired biomedical scientists to create confusion.

"Here's a recipe for academic controversy," observes Richard C. Paddock: "First, find dozens of hard-core teenage smokers as young as 14 and study their brains with high-tech scans. Second, feed vervet monkeys liquid nicotine and then kill at least six of them to examine their brains. Third, accept $6 million from tobacco giant Philip Morris to pay for it all.

Scientists in eight Arctic nations prepared "a landmark assessment of oil and gas activity" in the region over six years, including "a clear set of recommendations on how to extract safely what are thought to be up to one quarter of the world's energy reserves." But the United States government blocked the report's release, as it prepares "to sell off exploration licenses for the frozen Chukchi Sea off Alaska, one of the last intact habitats of the polar bear." One of the authors of the report said the U.S. move "could be linked to activities in the Chukchi Sea ...