A new Amnesty International report titled “The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry’s Toxic Pollution in the USA” documents the health and environmental impact of fossil fuel and petrochemical plants run by corporations like ExxonMobil and Shell along the Houston Ship Channel in Texas, identifying it as a “sacrifice zone” where the harms are disproportionately borne by marginalized communities.

A damning new Human Rights Watch report documents the devastating human toll of fossil fuel projects in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, an 85-mile corridor stretching from Baton Rouge to New Orleans that is filled with fossil fuel and petrochemical plants. Human Rights Watch found newborns living in Cancer Alley experience low birth weights at more than three times the national average.

In what many are calling a major victory for the climate movement, the Biden administration on Friday paused approvals for new liquified natural gas export terminals. In Louisiana, environmental justice activist Roishetta Sibley Ozane helped push for the change and calls the pause “a monumental decision in the fight for climate justice,” a result of years of organizing by activists and frontline communities.

In an extraordinary development, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled Oklahoma death row prisoner Richard Glossip will now get the chance to argue for a new trial, after maintaining his innocence for three decades. Glossip has faced nine separate execution dates and been given his final meal three times. In 2015, he was saved from death just hours before his execution only after prison officials admitted they had ordered the wrong drug.

Ohio lawmakers are taking the “next steps to kickstart” their execution chamber with experimental nitrogen gas, just days after Alabama used the same method for the first time in U.S. history, which the U.N. has warned is a form of torture. Alabama officials claim the execution was humane and effective, but we speak with Kenneth Smith’s spiritual adviser, Rev. Jeff Hood, who was there and says it was “the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.

On the same day the U.N.’s highest court accepted South Africa’s case alleging genocide in Gaza, Israel accused 12 employees with the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, of taking part in the Hamas attack on October 7. The United States and at least 10 other nations have now suspended funding to the agency, which retains a staff of over 13,000 and provides essential aid to most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.

We get an update on conditions in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis area, where displaced Palestinians who fled there to seek refuge are reporting heavy aerial and tank fire as Israel intensifies its ground offensive around two main hospitals there. Dr. Thaer Ahmad is an emergency room physician who spent three weeks volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. “I thought, ‘This can’t be real.

The Biden administration is on trial in the United States for failure to prevent the “unfolding genocide” in Gaza. On Friday, lawyers for the Biden administration argued the court lacks the proper jurisdiction to decide the case, while Palestinians and Americans testified about atrocities committed by Israel with American support. “I can’t think of another time where, in a U.S.

The Pentagon is accusing Iranian-backed militants of killing three U.S. soldiers in a drone strike at a base in Jordan along the Syrian border, making the troops the first U.S. armed forces killed by enemy fire in the region since October 7. A group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed responsibility for the attack and said attacks would escalate if the U.S. continues to support Israel during the latter’s destruction of Gaza. President Biden vowed the U.S. would respond.

In a highly anticipated ruling, the International Court of Justice at The Hague has found that there is a “real and imminent risk” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and supported “at least some” of the provisional measures South Africa had requested when it brought the case in order to rein in Israel’s military assault. Though the ruling falls short of calling for an immediate ceasefire, analysts say it is nevertheless a significant milestone.