Up to 400,000 people took to the streets of New York City on Sunday for the People’s Climate March, making it the largest environmental protest in history. The march brought together indigenous peoples, organized labor, and many other constituencies, in addition to more traditional environmental activists. 

On Sep 23, world leaders will gather at the United Nations for an emergency summit on climate change. The People’s March is a plea for action on soaring temperatures, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, and the deadly human cost of global warming. If carbon emissions aren’t controlled we can expect climate change to fuel droughts, floods, and other natural disasters that will kill or displace untold numbers of people in the years to come. 

Democracy Now! has extensive coverage of the event.

[Photo: southbendvoice, Creative Commons.]

An investigation by the Toronto Star uncovered numerous serious ethical and/or scientific problems with medical trials conducted by Canadian researchers, according to a report published Tuesday:

In 2012, a top Toronto cancer researcher failed to report a respiratory tract infection, severe vomiting and other adverse events.

A clinical trial run by an Alberta doctor reported that patients responded more favourably to the treatment than they actually did.

A Toronto hospital’s chief of medical staff ran a clinical trial of autistic children on a powerful antipsychotic, and he did not report side-effects suffered by four of the children.

And numerous doctors across the country failed to tell participants that one of the goals of the clinical trial was to test the safety of the drug they were taking. [The Star]

The investigation found that eight Canadian doctors had been flagged repeatedly by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for deficient research, including one Alberta cancer researcher who had been cited three times. 

[Photo credit: chesbayprogram, Creative Commons.]

The Best of the Week’s News

• An in-depth portrait of fast food’s Fight For 15 campaign in the New Yorker.

• Drop that snakeskin stiletto! Clothing made from endangered species is seized en route to Fashion Week. (sound plays automatically)

• Erosion costs Louisiana 16 square miles of land each year–it’s so bad that the iconic boot shape of the state is disappearing.

• Severely injured children are less likely to survive their injuries if they are taken to trauma centers that specialize in adult care, rather than pediatric trauma.

• Check out the photos from last night’s Your Shirt Off Their Backs panel discussion on sweatshops, labor, and the global economy. Thanks to our distinguished panelists and moderator, our hosts at 32BJ Headquarters, and everyone who came out to the event. We’ll be adding more photos next week, so be sure to check back to see them all. 

The Post and Courier wins the September Sidney Award for “Till Death Do Us Part,” an investigative multimedia series examining South Carolina’s domestic homicide crisis. This week also marks the twentieth anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, which was signed into law on Sep 13, 1994. The issue of domestic violence has been making national headlines this week, since Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was suspended indefinitely from the NFL after video surfaced showing him knocking out his future wife in a hotel elevator. 

Getting back to the Post and Courier, more than 300 women have been killed by men in South Carolina in the past decade. At the time the series was published, the state had the highest rate of male-on-female murder in the country. An 8-month investigation by Doug Pardue, Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Natalie Caula Hauff found sexism and guns were to blame for a death rate more than twice the national average.

Read my Backstory interview with Doug Pardue and Glenn Smith and learn about the making of this remarkable and highly influential piece of journalism. After “Till Death Do Us Part” ran, the speaker of the South Carolina House of Representatives announced a special panel to help craft new domestic violence legislation for the next session.