Media

In "eminent domain," a government can seize property for public use, as long as it compensates the owner. In "imminent domain," it stands to reason, the government wants to do it NOW. Except that there is no such thing as "imminent domain." It's a mistake--a common one, but a mistake nonetheless. The only thing "eminent" and "imminent" have in common...

by Jake Bernstein

A federal judge in Manhattan is pondering whether to grant the request of the New York Federal Reserve to seal the case brought by former senior bank examiner Carmen Segarra.

As reported by ProPublica last week, Segarra filed a lawsuit against the New York Fed and three of its employees alleging she had been wrongfully terminated last year after she determined that Goldman Sachs had insufficient conflict-of-interest policies.

On Friday, the Fed asked for a protective order to seal documents in the case as well as parts of the complaint. In a letter to U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams, New York Fed counsel David Gross said the information should be removed from the public docket because it is “Confidential Supervisory Information,” including internal New York Fed emails and materials provided to the Fed by Goldman.

“These documents show that at the time (Segarra) left the employ of the New York Fed, she purloined property of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,” Gross wrote, citing Fed rules that prohibit disclosing supervisory information without prior approval of the Fed.

Gross argues that the Fed’s obligation to keep bank supervisory records secret outweigh the public’s right to know. “The incantation of a ‘public right to know’ cannot ever be a license to discharged employees that they may violate Federal law simply by filing a complaint in Federal court,” Gross wrote.

Segarra and her lawyer could not be reached for comment.

While Abrams considers her decision, Segarra’s lawsuit and appended documents have been removed from Pacer, the online records system for federal courts. The complaint and related documents are available via links in ProPublica’s story and have been published elsewhere online.

Gross states in his letter that Segarra previously made a $7 million settlement offer. The Fed rejected it.

The New York Fed has historically been one of the most opaque financial regulators and maintains that it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act because it is not a public agency.

Under new powers granted to it by Congress, the Federal Reserve System carries responsibility for ensuring that the nation’s most complex financial institutions are not posing a systemic threat to the world economy.

Because of its location, the New York Fed supervises the majority of the so-called “Too- Big-to-Fail” banks. New York Fed officials acknowledge that the institution failed in its regulatory responsibilities in the lead-up to the financial crisis.

A hearing on the Fed’s request is scheduled for tomorrow in Abrams’ court.

UK author and actress Lucy Ann Holmes bought a copy of The Sun one day last August to read its sports page-- the previous day, six British women had won Olympic gold medals. But the predominant woman in the paper was the topless one on page three, a tasteless recurring feature. "Lucy was horrified to see that the page-three image...

by Cora Currier

The United States is loosening controls over military exports, in a shift that former U.S. officials and human rights advocates say could increase the flow of American-made military parts to the world’s conflicts and make it harder to enforce arms sanctions.

Come tomorrow, thousands of parts of military aircraft, such as propeller blades, brake pads and tires will be able to be sent to almost any country in the world, with minimal oversight – even to some countries subject to U.N. arms embargos. U.S. companies will also face fewer checks than in the past when selling some military aircraft to dozens of countries.

Critics, including some who’ve worked on enforcing arms export laws, say the changes could undermine efforts to prevent arms smuggling to Iran and others.  

Brake pads may sound innocuous, but “the Iranians are constantly looking for spare parts for old U.S. jets,” said Steven Pelak, who recently left the Department of Justice after six years overseeing investigations and prosecutions of export violations.

“It’s going to be easier for these military items to flow, harder to get a heads-up on their movements, and, in theory, easier for a smuggling ring to move weapons,” said William Hartung, author of a recent report on the topic for the Center for International Policy.

In the current system, every manufacturer and exporter of military equipment has to register with the State Department and get a license for each planned export. U.S. officials scrutinize each proposed deal to make sure the receiving country isn’t violating human rights and to determine the risk of the shipment winding up with terrorists or another questionable group.

Under the new system, whole categories of equipment encompassing tens of thousands of items will move to the Commerce Department, where they will be under more “flexible” controls. Final rules have been issued for six of 19 categories of equipment and more will roll out in the coming months. Some military equipment, such as fighter jets, drones, and other systems and parts, will stay under the State Department’s tighter oversight.

Commerce will do interagency human rights reviews before allowing exports, but only as a matter of policy, whereas in the State Department it is required by law.

The switch from State to Commerce represents a big win for defense manufacturers, who have long lobbied in favor of relaxing U.S. export rules, which they say put a damper on international trade. Among the companies that recently lobbied on the issue: Lockheed, which manufactures C-130 transport planes, Textron, which makes Kiowa Warrior helicopters, and Honeywell, which outfits military choppers.

Overall, industry trade groups and big defense companies have spent roughly $170 million over the last three years lobbying on a variety of issues, including export control reform, a ProPublica analysis of disclosure forms shows.

The administration says in a factsheet that “spending time and resources protecting a specialty bolt diverts resources from protecting truly sensitive items,” and that the effort will allow them to build “higher fences around fewer items.” Commerce says it will beef up its enforcement wing to prevent illegal re-exports or shipments to banned entities. The military has also supported the relaxed controls, arguing that the changes will make it easier to arm foreign allies.

An interview with Commerce Department officials was canceled due to the government shutdown, and the State Department did not respond to questions.

The shift is part of a larger administration initiative to update the arms export process, which many acknowledge needed to be streamlined. But critics of the move to Commerce say that decision has been overly driven by the interests of defense manufacturers.

“They’ve cut through the fat, into the meat, and to the bone,” said Brittany Benowitz, who was defense adviser to former Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., and recently co-authored a paper on the pending changes.

“I think it’s fair to say that the views of the enforcement agencies and actors charged with carrying out the controls haven’t won the day,” said Pelak, the former Justice Department official.

Current controls haven’t prevented the U.S. from dominating arms exports up to now: In 2011, the U.S. concluded $66 billion in arms sales agreements, nearly 80 percent of the global market. The State Department denied just one percent of arms export licenses between 2008 and 2010.

At a recent hearing, a State Department official touted the economic benefits, saying the “defense industry is going to become even more competitive than they are already.”

Under the new policy, military helicopters, transport planes and other types of military equipment that typically need approval may be eligible for license-free export to 36 allied governments, including much of Europe, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand.

According to Colby Goodman, an arms-control expert with the Open Society Policy Center, once an item is approved for that exemption, it’s not clear that there will be any ongoing, country-specific human rights review. (The State Department hasn’t yet responded to our request for comment on that point.)

Goodman is particularly concerned about Turkey, where in the last year authorities violently suppressed protests and “security forces committed unlawful killings,” according to the most recent State Department Human Rights report.

Under the new system, some military parts can now be sent license-free to any country besides China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria. Other parts that are deemed not “specially designed” for military use, while also initially banned from those countries, have even fewer restrictions on re-exports.

Spare parts are in high demand from sanctioned countries and groups, which need them to keep old equipment up and running, according to arms control researchers. Indonesia scrambled to keep its C-130s in the air after the U.S. blocked exports for human rights violations in the 1990s. In a report on trade in arms parts, Oxfam noted that by the time of the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, Muammar Qaddafi’s air combat fleet was in dire shape, referred to by one analyst as “the world’s largest military parking lot.” Goodman said Congolese militia members may be using aging arms that the U.S. sold decades ago to the former Zaire.

Pelak says the changes will make enforcement harder by getting rid of part of the paper trail as parts and munitions exit the U.S.: “When you take away that licensing record, you put the investigation overseas.” His office handled dozens of cases each year in which military items had been diverted to prohibited countries. The Government Accountability Office raised concerns last year about Commerce’s enforcement abilities as it takes control of exports that once went through the State Department.

The president is authorized – in fact, required – to revise the list of items under State Department control. But the massive shift to Commerce means that laws and regulations that were designed with the longstanding State Department system in place may now be up to presidential prerogative.

Vetting for human rights compliance is one such requirement. The Commerce Department said it will also continue to publicly report the sales of so-called “major defense equipment.”

Other laws may not get carried over, however. For example, if firearms are moved to Commerce, manufacturers may no longer have to notify Congress of foreign sales.

Several organizations, including the Center for International Policy, the Open Society Policy Center, and the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights, have called on the administration to hold off moving some military items from the State Department, and have asked Congress to apply State’s reporting requirements and restrictions to more of the military items and parts soon to be under Commerce control.

In one area, the administration does appear to have temporarily backed off – firearms and ammunition. Any decision to loosen exports for firearms could have conflicted with the president’s call for enhanced domestic gun control.

According to a memo obtained by the Wall Street Journal last spring, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security both opposed draft versions of revisions to the firearms category. (The Justice Department press office is out of operation due to the government shutdown, and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.) Shifting firearms was also likely to be a lightning rod for arms control groups. As the New York Times’ C.J. Chivers has documented, small arms trafficking has been the scourge of conflicts around the world.

Draft rules for firearms and ammunitions were ready in mid-2012, according to Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for gun manufacturers. The Commerce Department even sent representatives to an industry export conference to preview manufacturers on the new system they might fall under.

But since the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., last December, no proposed rule has been published.

Keane thinks the connection is irrelevant. “This has nothing to do with domestic gun control legislation. We’re talking about exports,” he said. “Our products have not moved forward, and we’re disappointed by that.”

The defense industry has long pushed for a loosening of the U.S. export controls. Initial wish-lists were aimed at restructuring and speeding up the State Department system, where the wait for a license had sometimes stretched to months. The current focus on moving items to Commerce began under the Obama administration.

The aerospace industry has been particularly active, as new rules for aircraft are the first to take effect. Commercial satellites had been moved briefly to Commerce in the 1990s, but when U.S. space companies were caught giving technical data to China in 1998, Congress returned them to State control. Last year, satellite makers successfully lobbied Congress to lift satellite-specific rules that had kept them from being eligible for the reforms.

Newer industries want to cash in, too. Virgin Galactic wrote in a comment on a proposed rule that the “nascent but growing” space tourism industry was hindered by current rules. At a conference in 2011, the chief executive of Northrup Grumman warned of “the U.S. drone aircraft industry losing its dominance” if exports weren’t boosted. (Drones are regulated under missile technology controls, and are mostly unaffected by the current changes.)

Lauren Airey, of the National Association of Manufacturers, named two main objections to the current system. First off, fees: Any company that makes a product on the State Department list has to be registered whether or not they actually export, with yearly costs starting at $2,500. There’s no fee for the Commerce list.

Secondly, any equipment that contains a listed part gets “lifetime controls,” Airey said. If a buyer wants to resell something, even for scrap, they need U.S. approval. (For example, the U.S. is currently debating whether to let Turkey re-sell American attack helicopters to Pakistan.) Under Commerce, “there are still limitations, but they are more flexible,” Airey said.

Airey’s association (and other trade groups) makes the case that foreign competitors are “taking advantage of perceived and real issues in U.S. export controls to promote foreign parts and components – advertising themselves as State-Department-free.” Airey demurred when asked for an estimate on the amount of business lost: “It’s hard to put a number directly on how much export controls cause U.S. companies to be avoided.”

An Aerospace Industries Association executive noted at a panel this spring, “We really did not move the needle at all by complaining about the fact that we weren't making as much money as we wanted to.”

But at a recent hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, members of Congress highlighted economic impact.

“In my district in Rhode Island,” said David Cicilline, D-R.I., “as many of our defense companies are looking to expand their business, really, to respond to declines in defense domestic spending, international sales are becoming even more important and really critical…to the job growth in my state.”

William Keating, D-Mass., said that “with declining defense budgets, arms sales are even more critical to the defense industry in my state to maintain production lines and keep jobs.”

“That would not have been the response a decade ago,” said one staffer who works on the issue. “National security hawks would have been worried about defense items moving to the Commerce list. The environment on the Hill has dramatically changed.”

One concern came from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which believes that easing controls on military technology and software could actually lead to more outsourcing of production.

William Lowell, who spent a decade of his 30 years at the State Department directing defense trade controls, told ProPublica that the move represents a major shift in the U.S. attitude towards international arms trade. U.S. policy has long been aimed at “denying the entry of U.S. military articles of any type into the international gray arms market – for which small arms and military parts are the lifeblood,” Lowell wrote in comments opposing the new rules. “Commercial arms exports have never been considered normal commercial trade.”

On Thursday afternoon, biologist Danielle N. Lee, who writes about ecology and diversity in science for her Scientific American blog, Urban Scientist, received an email. An editor from Biology-Online.org, an aggregator and a partner site of SciAm wanted Lee to write for the site. Upon learning the assignment would be unpaid, according to Wired, Lee replied with a polite rejection:...

by Charles Ornstein

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Since the federal health insurance exchange has launched, top federal officials have told interviewers that they do not know how many people have been able to enroll using the healthcare.gov website.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Oct. 4, President Obama said: “Well, I don’t have the numbers yet.”

Then, appearing on the Daily Show on Oct. 8, the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she didn’t have the information either. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know.”

Some states, including California, New York and Colorado, are running their own health insurance marketplaces for their residents. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is handling enrollment for 30-plus states, including Texas, Georgia and Florida, which decided not to set up their own exchanges.

Federal officials have proudly proclaimed the number of visitors to the healthcare.gov site, as in this tweet:

Interest still high for http://t.co/BSPAgxrr4e, 14.6m unique visits in first 10 days, more people enrolling, wait times reduced & eliminated

— Joanne Peters (@JoannePtrs) October 11, 2013

But they have declined numerous opportunities to provide enrollment figures. The latest example: A New York Times article on Sunday about the site’s problems included this sentence: “Neither [CMS administrator Marilyn] Tavenner nor other agency officials would answer questions about the exchange or its performance last week.”

Reporters and consumers across the country have said they are simply unable to enroll on the site. You can read about my experience.

Federal officials have said that they will release enrollment figures once a month, beginning in November.

Those interested in what transparency looks like can check the states. Some examples of those that have put out numbers:

Connecticut

Source: http://learn.accesshealthct.com/in-the-news/

Kentucky

Source: http://migration.kentucky.gov/Newsroom/governor/20131010kynectupdate.htm

Maryland (full of charts)

Source: http://www.marylandhealthconnection.gov/assets/MHC_Update_Oct112013.pdf

Washington

Source: http://www.wahbexchange.org/news-resources/press-room/press-releases/washington-healthplanfinder-receives-10000-applications

MIAMI, FL -- When CJR interviewed Howard Saltz, editor of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, earlier this year, he had this to say about running a paper whose newsroom had been slashed during the crisis: "We've chosen to make investigative a priority out of the resources that we have." The paper had preserved a dedicated investigative team, and...

Ginger Baker, the former Cream drummer, gives the interview of the month to Rolling Stone. Baker is simply not having any of it: Why is Alec your favorite bass player? Because of the way he plays!... Are you living in England now? 

 Yes. That's where I am right now. You just phoned me so you know that this is...

Google and payment processing companies are going after for-profit websites that post publicly available arrest photographs and then (in many cases) charge up to $1,000 to have them removed. But changing Google search to stop showing mugshot sites near the top of the results could end up causing collateral damage to some news sites that also post booking photos to...

The splashy Obamacare media story of the week was Jon Stewart's Daily Show interview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Monday night. It was worth watching, even if not as sharp as The Daily Show's 2012 sit-down with Sebelius; the secretary stuck to her talking points, never really giving a good reply to Stewart's repeated questions about why...

Culled from CJR’s frequently updated “Must-reads from around the Web,” our staff recommendations for the best pieces of journalism (and other miscellany) on the Internet, here are your can’t-miss must-reads of the past week: Christopher Chabris should calm down -- Malcolm Gladwell responds to his persistent critic The new canon -- HBO vs. Netflix Was the saga of Colin McGinn...

by Charles Ornstein

There’s been a lot of talk in recent days about how the glitchy rollout of the federal health insurance marketplace may not mean much IF the developers of healthcare.gov are able to turn it around in the next month.

To prove the point, health policy experts point to the 2006 start of Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program for seniors and the disabled, which was also bumpy.

But in a number of ways, it appears the agency that runs the federal health insurance exchange, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hasn’t modeled that website after Part D, which it also runs.

Journalists have pointed out that one major problem with the exchanges is that, until Thursday, it did not allow consumers to “window shop,” or look at details of plans, before giving their personal information and being verified as eligible for coverage. Now users can do that.

Part D’s signup site is quite different. Medicare beneficiaries do not have to provide any information about themselves or verify their eligibility to get detailed cost estimates.

Below are screenshots that show how simple the user interface is for those trying to register for a Part D plan (although if you are a senior with health problems or disabled, this too may seem complicated.)

The beginning: Go to the Plan Finder page. While you have the option to enter your personal information, the first choice is to perform a general search in which you simply enter your zip code.

Step 1: The system relies on the user to indicate the type of coverage he or she wants. There’s no complicated verification system at this point.

Step 2: You begin by entering the drugs you take. The website has a search tool that helps correct possible spelling errors and suggest similar drugs.

Step 3: Next you pick the pharmacies you use. Notice at the top how the page generates a drug list ID and password, which lets you come back later and make changes without having to start all over.

Step 4: You get to refine your results based on what’s important to you — for example, your desire to limit your premium or limit your deductible.

Finally: The results. That was fast. Once you find a plan you like, you can go through the enrollment process.

Could the federal exchange have been modeled off the Part D plan finder? Perhaps it will be in the future.

Factcheckers often struggle to change the minds of skeptical voters. But what effect do they have on the politicians under scrutiny? Can the threat of being factchecked help keep politicians honest? To answer this question, my co-author Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter and I conducted a field experiment during the final months of the 2012 campaign. We sent...

by Marshall Allen

ESPN reporters Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada faced formidable challenges when they investigated the National Football League’s denial of the brain injuries suffered by its players. Foremost among them: ESPN has a $15.2 billion dollar contract to broadcast NFL games, so they were investigating one of their own network’s biggest products. Furthermore, the League refused to cooperate with the story and pressured the network to soften its reports. “Every step of the way we got pushback from the NFL,” Steve Fainaru told ProPublica. “They fought almost every story we did.“

The reporting by the Fainaru brothers resulted in “League of Denial,” a book and documentary of the same name by the PBS public affairs program Frontline. The journalists revealed that the NFL spent decades undermining researchers who found links between football and brain injuries, and created their own research arm that downplayed the risks of playing football – even as its retirement fund was paying for brain injuries suffered by players. Behind the scenes, the NFL attacked the project “with a vengeance,” Steve Fainaru said. “They went to our editors, and they went to our editors’ editors. They basically tried to say (the reporting) was wrong without really providing any information.”

The brothers sat down with ProPublica health reporter Marshall Allen on the release date for the book and the documentary, Oct. 8, for ProPublica’s #muckreads podcast. They shared the inside story of how they got the story and the challenges it presented, including the conflict of interest of producing investigative reports that could undermine the profits of their employer and its biggest business partner, the NFL.

Weeks before the documentary aired, ESPN suddenly pulled out of the Frontline partnership, reportedly due to pressure from the NFL. Mark Fainaru-Wada said the breakdown was disappointing, but that ESPN never backed down from their journalism. The brothers are still credited as ESPN reporters in the film. The film uses footage created for ESPN, and the network as promoted their work. “The book and the film are creatures of ESPN – we wouldn’t have been able to do it without the full support of ESPN,” Fainaru-Wada said. “And the one saving grace that Steve and I continue to talk about is that the journalism hasn’t changed a bit. It’s exactly as it was when we went into it.”

by Christie Thompson

11:32 am, Oct. 11: this post has been updated to include proposals to amend state legislation.

Last week, a federal judge threw out former intern Lihuan Wang’s sexual harassment lawsuit against her boss at Phoenix Satellite Television U.S. Why? The judge ruled Wang, an unpaid intern, wasn’t an actual employee.

“Because Ms. Wang was an unpaid intern, she may not assert claims under the cited provisions of the [New York State Human Rights Law] and the [New York City Human Rights Law],” wrote U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel.

Castel noted that despite several recent amendments to the New York City Human Rights law, unpaid interns are still not explicitly covered. But that may not be the case for long. In response to the judge’s ruling, city council member Gale Brewer announced she would propose legislation to extend harassment protections to unpaid interns.

“As we have seen with a number of recent cases, interns are ripe for exploitation from their superiors,” council member Brewer said in an emailed statement. “We need to ensure that every person in the city of New York is offered the full protections of our Human Rights Law.”

Public advocate and mayoral frontrunner Bill de Blasio has also voiced support for the proposal.

“No one should ever be denied protection against sexual harassment in the workplace. Period,” de Blasio told the New York Daily News.

New York State Assembly members Joe Borelli and Linda Rosenthal said they will introduce legislation to address the issue on a state level. 

Brewer’s office said they weren’t aware of the loophole until the recent court decision.

“It takes a shocking opinion like this to catalyze some action,” said Wang’s lawyer Lynne Bernabei.

Wang interned in the Hong Kong-based media company’s New York office from December 2009 to January 2010, while getting her master’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University. Bernabei said Wang was doing much of the same work as Phoenix’s paid journalists, including on-air reporting.

Wang alleged that her boss Zhengzhu Liu lured her to his hotel room under the pretense of discussing her job performance and then groped her. According to the complaint, he later invited Wang to Atlantic City “to discuss job opportunities.” When she refused to go, Liu allegedly dropped all interest in hiring her, “in clear retaliation for her refusing his sexual advances.”

Wang is just one of many female employees and interns who say they were sexually harassed or assaulted by Liu. Another complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleged that for eight years, “Mr. Liu intentionally preyed on the most vulnerable employees at Phoenix, primarily those who were just beginning their careers in America or were looking to advance at Phoenix as interns.”

Phoenix Television could not be reached for comment. In a statement sent to Mother Jones in response to the D.C. lawsuit, Phoenix Television said it doesn’t tolerate “discrimination, sexual harassment, or retaliation in its workplace."

We’ve reported before how unpaid interns in many areas of the country aren’t protected from harassment and discrimination in the workplace. Lawmakers in Oregon and Washington D.C. have passed legislation to close the loophole, allowing complaints like the Phoenix case to proceed where they may be otherwise dismissed.

Both policies extend discrimination and harassment protections to unpaid interns, but do not address questions about pay. Brewer’s proposal would follow a similar model.

Brewer said unpaid interns may be especially vulnerable to harassment. “By their very nature, unpaid interns are less likely to have prior work experience,” Brewer said. “As they often take on internships in an effort to get a foot in the door, they are less likely to report offensive behavior.”

Women are more likely than men to face sexual harassment at work. Women filed about 8 of every 10 sexual harassment claims made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2012. And according to a study by Intern Bridge, women are significantly more likely than men to be in an unpaid internship.

“The fact that there’s no legislation to protect them...encourages people like Liu to harass these women,” Bernabei said. “They have no accountability, and companies know they don’t have to take action when they learn about it.”

Like most pre-game shows, ESPN's NBA Countdown was less an acquired taste than a settled-for taste, like the restaurant you eat at on a road trip because it's just off the highway. Most viewers barely have time to watch the actual games these days--who can absorb another hour for the set-up? Still, given the prominence of the league and ESPN's...

by David Epstein

Everyone knows Americans are fat and getting fatter, and everyone thinks they know why: more eating and less moving.

But the “big two” factors may not be the whole story. Consider this: Animals have been getting fatter too. The National Pet Obesity Survey recently reported that more than 50 percent of cats and dogs — that’s more than 80 million pets — are overweight or obese. Pets have gotten so plump that there’s now a National Pet Obesity Awareness Day. (It was Wednesday.) Lap dogs and comatose cats aren’t alone in the fat animal kingdom. Animals in strictly controlled research laboratories that have enforced the same diet and lifestyle for decades are also ballooning.

In 2010, an international team of scientists published findings that two dozen animal populations — all cared for by or living near humans — had been rapidly fattening in recent decades. “Canaries in the Coal Mine,” they titled the paper, and the “canaries” most closely genetically related to humans — chimps — showed the most troubling trend. Between 1985 and 2005, the male and female chimps studied experienced 33.2 and 37.2 percent weight gains, respectively. Their odds of obesity increased more than 10-fold.

To be sure, some of the chimp obesity crisis may be caused by the big two. According to Joseph Kemnitz, director of the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, animal welfare laws passed in recent decades have led caretakers to strive to make animals happier, often employing a method known to any parent of a toddler: plying them with sugary food. “All animals love to eat, and you can make them happy by giving them food,” Kemnitz said. “We have to be careful how much of that kind of enrichment we give them. They might be happier, but not healthier.”

And because they don’t have to forage for the food, non-human primates get less exercise. Orangutans, who Kemnitz says are rather indolent even in their native habitats in Borneo and Sumatra, have in captivity developed the physique of spreading batter.

Still, in “Canaries in the Coal Mine,” the scientists write that, more recently, the chimps studied were “living in highly controlled environments with nearly constant living conditions and diets,” so their continued fattening in stable circumstances was a surprise. The same goes for lab rats, which have been living and eating the same way for thirty years.

The potential causes of animal obesity are legion: ranging from increased rates of certain infections to stress from captivity. Antibiotics might increase obesity by killing off beneficial bacteria. “Some bacteria in our intestines are associated with weight gain,” Kemnitz said. “Others might provide a protective effect.”

But feral rats studied around Baltimore have gotten fatter, and they don’t suffer the stress of captivity, nor have they received antibiotics. Increasingly, scientists are turning their attention toward factors that humans and the wild and captive animals that live around them have in common: air, soil, and water, and the hormone-altering chemicals that pollute them.

Hormones are the body’s chemical messengers, released by a particular gland or organ but capable of affecting cells all over the body. While hormones such as testosterone and estrogen help make men masculine and women feminine, they and other hormones are involved in a vast array of functions. Altering or impeding hormones can cause systemic effects, such as weight gain.

More than a decade ago, Paula Baille-Hamilton, a visiting fellow at Stirling University in Scotland who studies toxicology and human metabolism, started perusing scientific literature for chemicals that might promote obesity. She turned up so many papers containing evidence of chemical-induced obesity in animals (often, she says, passed off by study authors as a fluke in their work) that it took her three years to organize evidence for the aptly titled 2002 review paper: “Chemical Toxins: A Hypothesis to Explain the Global Obesity Epidemic.” “I found evidence of chemicals that affect every aspect of our metabolism,” Baille-Hamilton said. Carbamates, which are used in insecticides and fungicides, can suppress the level of physical activity in mice. Phthalates are used to give flexibility to plastics and are found in a wide array of scented products, from perfume to shampoo. In people, they alter metabolism and have been found in higher concentrations in heavier men and women.

In men, phthalates interfere with the normal action of testosterone, an important hormone for maintaining healthy body composition. Phthalate exposure in males has been associated with a suite of traits symptomatic of low testosterone, from lower sperm count to greater heft. (Interference with testosterone may also explain why baby boys of mothers with higher phthalate levels have shorter anogenital distances, that is, the distance between the rectum and the scrotum. Call it what you want, fellas, but if you have a ruler handy and find that your AGD is shorter than two inches, you probably have a smaller penis volume and a markedly higher risk of infertility.)

Baille-Hamilton’s work highlights evidence that weight gain can be influenced by endocrine disruptors, chemicals that mimic and can interfere with the natural hormone system.

A variety of flame retardants have been implicated in endocrine disruption, and one chemical originally developed as a flame retardant — brominated vegetable oil, or BVO — is banned in Europe and Japan but is prevalent in citrusy soft drinks in the U.S. Earlier this year, Gatorade ditched BVO, but it’s still in Mountain Dew and other drinks made by Gatorade’s parent company, PepsiCo. (Many doctors would argue that for weight gain, the sugar in those drinks is the primary concern.) PepsiCo did not respond to a request for comment, but shortly after the Gatorade decision was made a company spokeswoman said it was because “some consumers have a negative perception of BVO in Gatorade.”

While PepsiCo has taken brominated vegetable oil out of Gatorade, it's still in Mountain Dew and other drinks made by the company. (Krista Kjellman Schmidt/ProPublica)

And then there are the newly found zombie chemicals, which share a nasty habit — rising from the dead at night — with their eponymous horror flick villains. The anabolic steroid trenbolone acetate is used as a growth promoter in cattle in the U.S., and its endocrine disrupting metabolites — which wind up in agricultural run-off water — were thought to degrade quickly upon exposure to sunlight. Until last month, when researchers published results in Science showing that the metabolites reconstitute themselves in the dark.

Says Emily Dhurandhar, an obesity researcher at the University of Alabama-Birmingham: “Obesity really is more complex than couch potatoes and gluttons.”

Two years ago, AT&T announced it had agreed to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion. The deal would have effectively made the US a two-carrier country, with AT&T and Verizon controlling 73 percent of the wireless industry, with third-place Sprint at 16 percent, but losing billions of dollars a year. So confident was AT&T in the decades-long...

While the government shutdown may seem like a domestic problem, the stalemate between the Republican House and President Barack Obama is being watched across Europe. All major European press have been covering the failure of congress and the US president to come to an agreement daily. It was the lead story on Austria's evening news Thursday because, as one economist,...

American Banker's Kate Berry has a very interesting piece on the pile of bad mortgages the big banks still have on their books—ones that they're almost certainly not accounting for correctly. The Banker reports that the biggest four banks—Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—alone have $57 billion in "seriously delinquent" FHA mortgages that they're not writing down:...