On this week’s episode, the New Orleans City Council approved new measures that could provide greater oversight of the recently re-approved use of surveillance technology.

The “dead zone” — a hypoxic area where the Mississippi River dumps into the Gulf of Mexico — is smaller in size than last year, but not due to much-needed pollutant reduction efforts upstream, according to scientists.

A lawyer for John F. Kennedy High School’s graduating class of 2019 is asking a judge to find the Orleans Parish School Board and the charter group that ran the school liable for negligence and educational malpractice after mismanagement resulted in half the class being unable to graduate on time.

Our guests this week are Lens reporters Marta Jewson, Joshua Rosenberg, Nick Chrastil and editor Charles Maldonado.

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Carolyne Heldman has been in media for 35 years, most recently as Executive Director at an NPR member station in Colorado where she was responsible for new multi-platform content initiatives, strategic...