The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has some best practices for families to save money, help those who don’t have enough to eat, and conserve resources for future generations. By making a list of weekly meals and necessary ingredients, shoppers will buy less than they would otherwise and keep things fresh, with less waste. Also, checking the pantry and refrigerator before a grocery shopping trip can prevent buying duplicates of things you already have.

The largest payout ever given to an informant, the $104 million awarded to Birkenfeld were part of the IRS’s whistleblower program, which rewards informants up to 30 percent of collected funds and fines from pursued claims. Around the time of the award, the IRS was seeking to shrink potential whistleblowers’ payout, which drew fierce criticism from a number of lawmakers. The IRS program, which was revamped in 2006 to offer higher rewards and incentives, was created to encourage informants to come forward with allegations of potential wrongdoings in an effort to help the agency recover an estimated $100 billion a year of underpaid taxes. 

Corporations not only have the power to effect our natural environment, but also our cultural norms and expectations.  They provide us, for a price, access to the goods and services that we require in order to successfully get through our days.  We place expectations concerning the proclaimed levels of quality and safety on those products and trust that what we are getting in return is in keeping with those expectations.  Occasionally, corporations do not hold up their end of the bargain.  Such was the case over the past few months with General Motors and its recall of over 28 million cars in the year 2014 alone.

Leading environmental groups declared on Monday that the Obama administration's latest environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline fundamentally violated the nation's core environmental law, an unmistakable warning that they would sue the State Department if it continued to insist that the pipeline poses no significant environmental risk. As if to bolster their case, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in as well with its own rebuke. 

The subject is so vast that it demands a director up to the task.  No stranger to activist movements, Kitchell created Berkeley in the Sixties, one of the defining protest films of its era, and the winner of many awards, including the the Best Documentary by the National Society of Film Critics.  Undaunted by the amount of research required, the mountains of archival footage to unearth, the spokespersons and narrators—Ashley Judd, Meryl Streep and Isabelle Allende, among others—necessary to make a relevant case for the survival of planet Earth, Kitchell has succeeded brilliantly.

The Department of Justice reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Transocean for its role in oil giant BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, which polluted the Gulf of Mexico with upwards of 4.9 million barrels of petroleum in 2010. “What’s important to understand,” says the Environmental Defense Fund’s Elizabeth Skree, “is that this settlement represents the first significant funding specifically allotted for Gulf Coast restoration.”The settlement funds will be paid under the Clean Water Act, with a portion of those funds being used to restore the Gulf.