The Houston-based contractor under fire for the electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers lands a multimillion-dollar deal to build the Army a power plant and electrical distribution system at a military camp in Iraq. More...

The percentage of Southern workers belonging to unions remained unchanged in 2008. Florida and North Carolina show biggest gains, Georgia and Mississippi largest losses. More...

The Galveston Housing Authority is making plans to demolish two public housing developments even as public housing residents struggle to find affordable places to live. More...

Iraq said Thursday it will bar the controversial Blackwater Worldwide from providing security protection for U.S. diplomats More...

While President Obama pushes more sustainable energy policies and former Vice President Al Gore warns of the disastrous consequences of inaction, fossil-fuel-funded climate skeptics continue to sow doubt and confusion. Meanwhile, new federal research shows why the South is especially at risk from a warmer planet's rising seas. More...

SOS Ballots -- a top corporate-backed group fighting the Employee Free Choice Act -- is shrouding its anti-union campaign in the language of voting rights. But its leaders aren't known for being friends of racial justice or protecting the vote. More...

Law makers are urging federal prosecutors to criminally investigate a South Georgia peanut processing plant linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak. More...

Post-hurricane New Orleans is following a greener path. As the city struggles to rebuild, many institutions and individuals want to make sure it's done in a cleaner and smarter way. More...

Immigration advocates say the second death of an illegal immigrant being held in a Farmville, Va. jail underscores the lack accountability in U.S. detainee practices. More...

An organization with ties to hate groups provided more than 90 percent of the money for the failed "English only" campaign in Nashville. More...

TUES 1/27 -- While President Obama promises to close Guantanamo, Facing South guest contributor Jordan Flaherty reports on a court proceeding in Louisiana that exposes brutality closer to home. More...

A slow-motion environmental catastrophe is unfolding across the U.S. caused by poorly regulated dumping of coal combustion waste into abandoned mines. More...

When President Obama mentioned "levees breaking" in his inaugural address last Tuesday, Gulf Coast activists hoped that this was representative of a new attitude in Washington - one that would put rebuilding the Gulf Coast back on the national agenda. More...

MON 1/26 -- The House failed to include a pioneering jobs program for the Gulf Coast in its stimulus package. The battle now moves to the Senate, where Gulf Senators could revive the plan. More...

Facing massive budget shortfalls, states are seeking out a variety of methods to rein in bloated spending on corrections and prisons. More...

The eastern region of Virginia continues to see surging rates of HIV infection, and remains one of the hardest-hit regions in that state. More...

The 2008 elections showed the South is changing fast. But the minds of the nation's pundits seem stuck in Gone with the Wind. More...

New Orleans-based films lead the Oscar buzz this year. More...

Immigrant rights advocates have signed an "Open Letter to President Barack Obama" this week calling on him to take swift action to establish a new framework for addressing immigration policy. More...

Kentucky and West Virginia have the highest death rates from smoking, according to a new study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More...

One month since a massive coal ash waste dam burst at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant, authorities are still trying to understand the catastrophe's full environmental health impact. More...

More than fifty years after the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision, blacks and Latinos in U.S. schools are more segregated than they have been in more than four decades. More...

Doctors treating Palestinians injured in the recent war in Gaza suspect Israel used unconventional munitions known as Dense Inert Metal Explosive bombs that were developed and tested by the U.S. military at bases in the South. They've called for medical follow-up for the injured, since the weapons' unusual shrapnel puts blast survivors at risk for a rare and deadly cancer. More...

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the argument made in an amicus brief filed by a coalition of businesses and criminal defense associations that aimed to challenge corporate criminal liability. More...

The most visible and hopeful faces in Washington, D.C. for Obama's inaugural were youth and African-Americans. What's next for the Obama Generation -- and what can it learn from our past about how to bring real change? More...

Even as the nation celebrates the first African-American man to become president, around the country the economic recession continues to hit black men the hardest. More...

The new White House Web site unveiled Tuesday criticizes former-President Bush's failed response to Hurricane Katrina and makes a strong statement of support for rebuilding the region. More...

CLEAN, a national coalition of groups and individuals seeking a more environmentally friendly national energy policy, is asking citizens to pick up the phone today and ask President Obama to spend $500 billion on renewable energy over the next three years. More...

Barack Obama comes into office today, but does it signal change in the South? Read our latest issue of Southern Exposure to find out! More...

As King said in 1967, "One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great period of social change." More...

A new report shows that while many worry about sliding from an economic recession into depression, much of black America is already there. More...

The same week the feds authorize a $20 billion bailout to Bank of America -- making taxpayers its biggest stakeholder -- BoA subsidiary Countrywide candidly states in a New Hampshire court that its pledges to help struggling borrowers are only "vague advertisements." More...

A coalition of human rights groups are calling the Bush administration's report submitted yesterday to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination grossly inadequate and full of omissions More...

The U.S. Supreme Court is asked to hear an appeal challenging the constitutionality of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's unprecedented and problematic seizure of legal authority along the U.S.-Mexico border. More...

A federal judge ordered the Tennessee Valley Authority to clean up coal plant emissions hurting North Carolina, but residents of other states will continue to bear the effects of the company's poorly controlled air pollution. The ruling also increases the urgency of regulating solid coal combustion waste. More...

Analysts warn that the threat from hate groups could rise with the growing economic unrest. More...

Obama's plans for spending billions on state-based stimulus has revived hopes of passing the Gulf Coast Civic Works program, a proposal to create 100,000 green jobs and rebuild still-damaged infrastructure in struggling Gulf states. More...

Across the South, thousands of people have joined in the mobilization for peace in Gaza. More...

CDC Director Julie Gerberding offered her resignation to President-Elect Barack Obama last week. Under her controversial tenure, the CDC came under fire for failing to protect Hurricane Katrina's victims from dangerous formaldehyde fumes in government-provided trailers. More...

Under an order issued by Tennessee environmental regulators, the company must reimburse the state for its work following the massive Dec. 22 coal waste spill and hand over documents that could shed light on the dam's collapse. More...

This past week Gulf Coast advocates sent President-Elect Barack Obama a letter urging the signing of an Executive Order authorizing the Gulf Coast Civic Works Program to be included in the new stimulus package. More...

Could miners' increasingly long working hours be a factor behind the growing rate of black lung in Appalachia? More...

Alabama is now dealing with a spill of 10,000 gallons of coal waste -- a different kind than the stuff that inundated a Tenneessee community last month -- from a power plant storage pond into a tributary of the Tennessee River. How many more disasters will it take before the federal government regulates these obviously dangerous coal waste impoundments? More...

Some of the nation's first black fighter pilots will have a chance witness the first black President take his oath. More...

In new report, 70% of Southern states rate above average, and South Carolina is only state to receive an "A" for how it treats teachers. How did your state rate? More...

The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will decide whether Congress went too far in extending the life of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights legislation from 1965. More...

With states facing huge fiscal crises this year, lawmakers and prison officials are reevaluating their state's hard-line sentencing policies and looking at ways to help released inmates avoid returning to prison. More...

The spill of over 1 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge in Eastern Tennessee before Christmas was not only one of the biggest environmental disasters in history -- it also exposed the myth of "clean coal." More...

Testifying before the U.S. Senate about a massive spill of toxic coal waste from one of his company's power plants, Tom Kilgore displayed a surprising lack of knowledge about some of the Tennessee Valley Authority's most pressing problems. More...

Many U.S. troops serving overseas are effectively excluded from voting because they are not given enough time to cast absentee ballots. More...

Gay rights' advocates and foster care advocates are challenging a new Arkansas law banning unmarried couples living together from becoming foster or adoptive parents. More...

A letter to The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina (one of those Southern states with a big foreign automaker) More...

Sen. Bill Nelson (D) has revived his campaign to abolish the Electoral College. Experts say it won't happen -- but advocates say the movement for a popular vote is gaining steam. More...

The birth rate for teens rose in more than half of the states in the United States in 2006, with the biggest increases seen in the South. More...

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine proposed legislation Wednesday to allow for no-excuse, in-person absentee voting in Virginia as a way to reduce long lines at polls and make voting more convenient. More...

A dismal economic climate has led most newly-elected governors to tone down -- or cancel entirely -- their inaugural parties. But not West Virginia or North Carolina, which kicks off three days of glitzy gubernatorial festivities today. More...

With the company and government so far refusing to fund basic tests for residents affected by the ash spill from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant, an environmental group is turning to the public for help. More...

While hate crimes based on race, ethnicity or religion are reportedly down nationally, crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity continue to rise. Gay rights advocates say now is the time to push for comprehensive state and federal hate-crime laws that include sexual orientation and gender identity. More...

The Environmental Integrity Project looks at the dumping of six toxic metals into power plants' coal ash lagoons like the one that failed in Eastern Tennessee and finds cause for concern. Isn't it time for the federal government to regulate this environmental health threat? More...

Southerners may not know it, but they are intimately connected to Israel's campaign in Gaza in at least one way: The South supplies a large share of the weapons being used in the deadly conflict. More...

WED 1/7 -- The concern around toxic trailers has grown beyond the Gulf Coast. The attention garnered around FEMA's use of formaldehyde-contaminated trailers for displaced hurricane victims has exposed a larger, widespread problem in RVs, mobile homes and modular buildings like temporary classrooms. More...

Members of the U.S. Senate Committee that will hear testimony about the Tennessee ash spill accepted more than $1 million from ash-dumping electric utilities in the latest election cycle -- but they also represent states that have suffered a heavy toll from poorly regulated coal combustion waste. More...

To find out how state leaders plan to tackle one of the worst financial crises in history, listen to upcoming "state of the state" speeches and see how legislatures kick off their sessions. More...

Activists in the Gulf Coast were given a shock this past week when Brandon Darby sent out an open letter admitting he has been working as an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. More...

The Southern United States is home to the nation's greatest concentration of poorly regulated coal ash dumps like the one that that failed catastrophically at TVA's Kingston plant in Eastern Tennessee. We examine where the region's ash dumps are located, how much toxic waste is being dumped into them, and the companies responsible. More...

Support the Institute and our work for a better South and world today, and a get a copy of the latest issue of Southern Exposure about the 2008 elections in the South! More...

Putting Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine at the helm of the Democratic National Committee signals a commitment to the 50-state strategy and fighting in the South. But where does he stand -- and does it matter? More...

Facing South inventories the nation's fastest-growing coal ash dumps like the one that failed catastrophically in Harriman, Tenn. -- and discovers just how big an environmental problem the nation and the South confront. More...

"I have never seen levels of arsenic, lead and copper this high in natural waters," said a chemistry professor who analyzed water samples from the Emory River. More...