While Administration officials work to determine new policies to oversee mountaintop removal permits, a much more public debate on the subject took place Thursday in Charleston. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship and environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. faced off on coal, climate change and the nation’s energy future. University of Charleston President Ed Welch moderated the discussion.

Mountain top removal mining is one of the most controversial industrial practices of our time but few outside the region have seen it first hand. A Pittsburgh activist is trying to change that by leading four-day tours into the heart of Appalachia to view mountaintop removal sites first-hand.

It’s been more than 20 years since Fostoria Glass closed in Moundsville, West Virginia, marking an end to nearly 100 years of glassmaking. Now the site is being demolished and city officials hope to see business in this area again soon.

Southern author and historian Taylor Branch recently visited West Virginia University for Martin Luther King Junior Day.Branch spent nearly 25 years researching and writing three books on the Civil Rights period.  Branch won a Pulitzer Prize for his first book on the subject, "Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963."  Branch explained that as a white child growing up in the South during the 1950s and 60s, he initially distanced himself from events related to the civil rights movement.