News

Fossil fuel companies have been overvaluing coal and gas reserves resulting in a dangerously inflated investment bubble, according to the latest report released by the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. With the 2010 agreement among governments to limit global warming to two degrees, the study's authors calculated that 60 to 80 percent of the oil, gas, and coal reserves listed on stock exchanges are unburnable.

Sanctions imposed by the United States against Iran have fallen short of expectations and the unintended consequences may pose risks, according to The Iran Project's latest report, released on Wednesday. The report, backed by former senior U.S. officials and outside experts, recommends that Washington rebalance its dual-track policy by strengthening its diplomatic efforts.

United States forces and agents engaged in torture following the attacks on September 11, 2001, according to a nonpartisan, independent study by The Constitution Project. The report found that the country's most senior officials were ultimately responsible for allowing and contributing to torturous interrogation techniques. There also is no firm evidence that the widespread use of torture produced significant and valuable information.

InsideClimate News is this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for National Reporting. Journalists Lisa Song, Elizabeth McGowan, and David Hasemyer were recognized for their coverage of the lasting ecological dangers posed by the million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in July 2010. InsideClimate News is the third and smallest online-only news organization to win a Pulitzer.

Season of Cambodia, a festival that celebrates the revival of Cambodian arts and culture, kicked off its two-month run in New York City this week. Conceived by the Phnom Penh-based nonprofit Cambodian Living Arts, the festival showcases dance, visual arts, film, music, discussions, and more, in venues across New York City, and features 125 artists from Cambodia.

Discerning and communicating the impact of grantmaking and other programmatic contributions are essential to a foundation's mission as well as its commitment to stewardship, transparency, and accountability. A year after a committee of Rockefeller Brothers Fund trustees and staff was established to tackle this issue, their approach to impact assessment has been published in the report, Evaluating Program Impact.

The Monica Bill Barnes and Company and Ballet Hispanico of New York will partake in the Rockefeller Brothers Fund's first dance residencies as part of the Pocantico Arts Collaborative this spring. Earlier this month, grants were awarded to each organization to develop new works as part of their residencies at The Pocantico Center. Both groups of will then return in the summer to perform their works in progress as part of Pocantico's summer performance season.

As the Fund's overall work has increasingly incorporated support for the involvement of youth in key issues, the board of trustees has approved a revision to the Democratic Practice program guidelines to wind down its focus on youth organizing. The decision was made after careful consideration and acknowledgment that other programs will continue to carry forward a commitment to support youth as a necessary constituency in furthering program goals.

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) has published a comprehensive digital newsbook about the drastic change in campaign financing during the 2012 elections, as a result of the Supreme Court's February 2010 Citizens United ruling. Consider the Source is a project that was launched in January 2012 to track the impact of campaign spending by nonprofits and Super PACs throughout the election year.

The Wesleyan Media Project analyzed the enormous amount of political advertising projected at Americans during the 2012 election campaigns. With 2013 underway, co-directors Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz, and Travis N. Ridout, offer their reflections, highlighting fascinating discussion points such as the predominance of male voiceovers, and the primary emotion conveyed in ads—anger.