• Four widows of the Ogoni 9, environmental campaigners who were executed by the Nigerian government in the 1990s, have won the right to press their case against Royal Dutch Shell in a Netherlands court.
(“Dutch Court Will Hear Widow’s Case Against Shell,” Guardian, May 1, 2019; “Ogoni Widows Testify As The Hague Over Shell’s Alleged Complicity in Killings,” Guardian, Feb. 12, 2019)
• Liberian environmental lawyer Alfred Brownell won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for defending over 500,000 acres of tropical forests from palm oil developers, in one of the planet’s 25 most important biodiversity hotspots.
(“Goldman Prize, Profile of Alfred Brownell, 2019 Africa Winner,” Goldman Environmental Prize, 2019; “Lawyer Wins Goldman Prize for Risking His Life to Protect Liberia’s Forests,” CNN, April 29, 2019)
• As President Donald Trump seeks $4.5 billion in new funding to deal with the spike of asylum-seekers turning themselves in at the U.S.-Mexico border, thousands of family detention beds remain empty. Despite this surplus of beds, the Department of Homeland Security insists it needs to build more facilities to house migrants arriving from Central America.
(“Trump Administration Says It Can’t Handle More Migrants, Ignoring Thousands of Vacant Beds in Family Detention Centers,” American Prospect, April 19, 2019; “White House Asks Congress for $4.5 Billion in Emergency Spending for Border,” Washington Post, May 1, 2019)
This week’s News Summary was narrated by Elaine Osowski.
