TV News LIES

Paula Getzelman and her neighbors in the Southern Monterey County Rural Coalition have three tasks on their agenda:

1. Combat the aggressive yellow star-thistle weed that is invading vineyards. 2. Add a bike lane to the gravel road that leads to their homes.
3. Learn more about the secretive fracking operations going on over the hill.

That last item is proving thornier than any noxious weed or road expansion. New neighbors aren't common here, but gas companies are moving into California's vast central stretches in the hopes of turning the state's Monterey Shale into the next Marcellus Shale.

Fifteen residents of Corpus Christi, Texas — so sickened by pollution they have been deemed crime victims — are asking a federal judge to force Citgo Petroleum Corp. to set up multimillion-dollar trust funds to cover medical and relocation costs, in a case with national ramifications.

A jury in 2007 convicted Citgo of criminal violations of the Clean Air Act, concluding that the company’s Corpus Christi refinery allowed toxic chemicals to drift from two large, uncovered storage tanks into a nearby neighborhood for a decade.

The coral in Australia's Great Barrier Reef is rapidly disappearing due to a host of factors -- all of which are influenced by humans, according to a new study. The report, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tracks coral cover over the last 27 years and finds levels have fallen by nearly 50%.

The Great Barrier Reef is one of the world's most beloved natural attractions because of its remarkable array of sea life. But, according to researchers, a trio of factors has conspired to degrade the reef: tropical cyclones, attacks from the coral predator the crown-of-thorns starfish, and rising water temperatures.

Ranjana Bhandari and her husband knew the natural gas beneath their ranch-style home in Arlington, Texas, could be worth a lot - especially when they got offer after offer from Chesapeake Energy Corp.

Chesapeake wanted to drill there, and the offers could have netted the couple thousands of dollars in a bonus and royalties. But Bhandari says they ultimately declined the deals because they oppose fracking in residential areas. Fracking, slang for hydraulic fracturing, is a controversial method used to extract gas and oil.

Plans to use an array of powerful air cannons in an undersea seismic study near a Central California nuclear power plant have federal and state officials juggling concerns over marine life with public safety.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. wants to use big air guns to emit strong sound waves into a large, near-shore area that includes parts of marine reserves to make three-dimensional maps of fault zones, some of which were discovered in 2008, near its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.

Residents and local officials gathered here Thursday to say a fond and final farewell to a lead-contaminated town that no longer exists.

In the past two years, this city in the far southeastern corner of Kansas has been virtually emptied of its residents, who were given government-sponsored buyouts to move away after Treece was declared unsafe for human habitation. Thursday’s ceremony was part municipal funeral and part celebration of the community that once was and is no longer.

More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organization DARA.

Hundreds of thousands of active oil and gas wells go without government inspection in any given year, and fines for regulatory violations are too small to change drilling company behavior, according to an energy watchdog group's review of regulation and enforcement activities in six states.

The 124-page report, released Tuesday by the Oil & Gas Accountability Project at Earthworks, an environmental and public health advocacy group based in Washington, examined well inspection data, violations, enforcement actions and penalties in Colorado, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.