Water quality and environmental contamination:

• NYC fudged records to show day care centers’ water was tested for lead, but no tests were performed. DOHMH — the agency that's required to inspect all 11,000 child care centers in New York City annually — had more or less given up on the task. http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-faked-day-care-centers-lead-water-level-test-records-article-1.2686760 (http://archive.is/qyTaC)

• 5,300 U.S. water systems are in violation of lead rules http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/28/us/epa-lead-in-u-s-water-systems/ (http://archive.is/DYMBq)

• US authorities distorting tests to downplay lead content of water https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/22/water-lead-content-tests-us-authorities-distorting-flint-crisis (http://archive.is/z00lw)

• "Records analyzed by The New York Times indicate that the Clean Water Act has been violated more than 506,000 times since 2004, by more than 23,000 companies and other facilities, according to reports submitted by polluters themselves." http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/13water.html (http://archive.is/HOSNv)

• Chicago Tribune: 11,000 Crestwood, Illinois residents were knowingly given tapwater contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals for 40 years. Federal agents raided Crestwood's village hall, their Department of Public Works building, and the police department. http://archive.is/D7Ddc , http://archive.is/V9Btl

• Mafia, toxic waste and a deadly cover up in an Italian paradise: 'They've poisoned our land and stolen our children' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/mafia-toxic-waste-and-a-deadly-cover-up-in-an-italian-paradise-t/ (https://archive.is/Q76LB)

The Government's influence in TV shows and movies:

• Washington DC’s role behind the scenes in Hollywood goes deeper than you think. "On television, we found more than 1,100 titles received Pentagon backing – 900 of them since 2005, from ‘Flight 93’ to ‘Ice Road Truckers’ and ‘Army Wives.' Between 1911 and 2017, more than 800 feature films received support from the US Government’s Department of Defence (DoD), a significantly higher figure than previous estimates indicate. These included blockbuster franchises such as Transformers, Iron Man, and The Terminator. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/hollywood-cia-washington-dc-films-fbi-24-intervening-close-relationship-a7918191.html (http://archive.is/bbMwx)

• "All these people that run studios - they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board." https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/nov/14/thriller-ridley-scott (http://archive.is/N2TRT)

• Over the decades, the relationship between Hollywood and the military has served the needs of both sides: Filmmakers gain access to equipment, locations, personnel and information that lend their productions authenticity, while the armed forces get some measure of control over how they're depicted. That's important not just for recruiting but also for guiding the behavior of current troops and appealing to the U.S. taxpayers who foot the bills. National CineMedia, which sells ads in movie theaters, paired the Army and 20th Century Fox for a marketing campaign designed to reach potential recruits. The campaign intercut footage from the Fox superhero movie "X-Men: First Class" with images of real soldiers as a voice-over intoned, "Heroes — ordinary people who discover they can do extraordinary things." The spots played in cinemas, and exit polls of 17- to 24-year-olds leaving the movie theater found that those who saw the ad were 25% more likely to say they would consider joining the Army. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/21/entertainment/la-ca-military-movies-20110821 (http://archive.is/01L57)

• How the CIA Helped Make “Zero Dark Thirty” - Behind the scenes, the CIA secretly worked with the filmmakers, and the movie portrayed the agency’s controversial “enhanced interrogation techniques” — widely described as torture — as a key to uncovering information that led to the finding and killing of bin Laden... but the massive Senate torture report released in December 2014 found that the program was brutal, mismanaged and — most importantly — didn’t work. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/watch-how-the-cia-helped-make-zero-dark-thirty/ (http://archive.is/zIRh0)