At one fill site, nearby groundwater has shown high levels of barium, arsenic and lead for the past six years, for which the site’s owner has only been fined $4,000. A similar case arose at a site in Northampton County, in which the owner was fined $13,875.

In 2009, during one of the most recent rounds of state inspections, regulators found 15 fill sites breaking rules, with six locations flouting regulations meant to keep the ash from reaching water.

“There’s absolutely no oversight of these structural fills and that seems problematic,” Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat who has pushed legislation to tighten ash rules since 2009, told the Charlotte Observer. “It’s sort of a silent, lurking issue that’s not getting any attention.”

Since February’s massive spill into the Dan River, critics have pointed to the state’s extreme lack of regulation over the coal industry, including energy giants such as Duke Energy.

Residents and environmental groups say the Dan River spill is just the latest incident in the company’s long history of pollution.

Dennis Lemly, a research biologist with Wake Forest University and the U.S. Forest Services told the Charlotte Observer that ash fill sites, though historically receiving even less attention, pose the same hazards as ash ponds.

Last week, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory—who worked at Duke Energy for 28 years—released a “Comprehensive Coal Ash Action Plan” he claims would “close loopholes in state law to strengthen the state’s ability to regulate coal ash ponds.”

However, environmental groups were quick to point out that the legislation “categorically fails to live up to the hype and meaningfully protect North Carolinians from poisoned drinking water as well as another tragic and toxic coal ash spill.”

“CCAAP would allow Duke Energy to continue poisoning North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia drinking water sources with a witch’s brew of toxic heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and selenium because it allows Duke Energy to cover up coal ash ponds with dirt and leave them unattended and unmonitored on the banks of nearby rivers and lakes,” a press release from the groups states. “The bill is a tremendous waste of time when people and the environment are threatened throughout the state. NC citizens desperately need real solutions – not a papering over of the problem.”

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The damages were cut to $9.5 billion by Ecuador’s highest court in November. Yet, Chevron has repeatedly refused to pay the fine on unproven charges that the trial was corrupt and has removed most of its assets in Ecuador in an apparent bid to avoid paying. Earlier this month, a US judge ruled in favor of Chevron’s claims of corruption, declaring that claimants cannot pursue damages through U.S. courts.

Last year, a Canadian court ruled that indigenous and farmer communities in Ecuador can seek enforcement in Canada of $9.5 billion owed to them.

Saenz, who now has the protection of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission along with the other lawyers, told The Guardian.”We will win this fight, however long it takes. We want to show that if poor communities organize, they can get justice,” Saenz told The Guardian.

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“This should give governments the confidence to forge a new robust climate agreement to cut emissions at the 2015 climate change conference in Paris,” said Steiner.

These advances have a drastic impact on the climate, the report notes. “Were it not for renewables, world energy-related CO2 emissions would have been an estimated 1.2 gigatonnes higher in 2013,” it states. “This would have increased by about 12 per cent the gap between where emissions are heading and where they need to be in 2020 if the world is to have a realistic prospect of staying under a two degree Centigrade temperature rise.”

“A long-term shift in investment over the next few decades towards a cleaner energy portfolio is needed to avoid dangerous climate change,” said Steiner.

Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, added: “Lower costs, a return to profitability on the part of some leading manufacturers, the phenomenon of unsubsidized market uptake in a number of countries, and a warmer attitude to renewables among public market investors, were hopeful signs after several years of painful shake-out in the renewable energy sector.”

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, according to reports, has approved a plan to transfer Chelsea Manning, the celebrated whistleblower and former Army intelligence officer who leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks, from a military prison where she is now serving sentence to a civilian prison.

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The idea of transfer, which has been approved but not finalized, would allow Manning to receive the hormone therapy she has requested in order to help complete her desire to live as a woman. As a military facility, Ft. Leavenworth Prison, where Manning is currently incarcerated does not provide such treatment, but federal prisons do.

According to the Associated Press:

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Despite these numbers, the Canadian government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly refused to hold a full public inquiry into the deaths.

In March, First Nations protesters held a series of train line blockades calling for justice for the missing women.

In addition to the UN official, the Assembly of First Nations, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, the Nova Scotia Native Women’s Association, the Council of Canadians and numerous others groups have also voiced support for a national inquiry.

The UN report was one of a series released by Anaya on the opening of the Thirteenth Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, held in New York from May 12-23. On May 20, Anaya will discuss his findings at the forum.

Anaya describes the relationship between Canadian First Nations groups and the federal government as “strained,” and recommends, among other things, more self-governance for Indigenous people in Canada. With so many people living in what he calls “distressing socio-economic conditions,” Anaya writes, “Canada faces a continuing crisis when it comes to the situation of indigenous peoples of the country.”

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Acknowledging the importance of the revelations made possible by Snowden as well as the work of online civil liberties groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Post describes how the landscape surrounding online privacy has changed dramatically in recent years, but especially since last summer when the first large-scale reporting on NSA spying began.

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Experts interviewed by the Post say the changes are being driven by an attempt to fulfill demands by customers that their privacy be protected.

“Post-Snowden, there is a greater desire to compete on privacy,” said Marc Zwillinger, founder of ZwillGen, a Washington-based law firm that has major tech companies as clients. “Companies have had notice policies and cared about these issues for years. It’s only now that it’s being discussed at the CEO level.”

EFF is now preparing the release of its annual “Who Has Your Back?” scorecard, which tracks the privacy policies and performance of the industry’s biggest players. “Last year,” according to CNET, “neither Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, nor Yahoo got a gold star in the ‘Tells users about government data requests’ column of the report card, though Twitter and others did.”

If the Post’s reporting is accurate, it appears that the scorecards this year—despite outstanding concerns about the role these same companies are playing in mass surveillance and the use of “big data” for their own purposes—might show improvement.

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