Finance
Cold case: Daughter of finance manager slain in 1959 still hopes for answers
This is the second installment in an occasional series about cold cases investigations in Cedar Rapids and Linn County.
CEDAR RAPIDS — Dianne Martin doesn’t remember much of that October day in 1959 because she was only 7 and in bed with a headache, fever and swelling of the neck and face — a bad case of the mumps.
“I remember my dad kissing me on the forehead and saying ‘Punkin, I hope you’re going to feel better today,’” she told The Gazette during a phone interview. “He always called me Punkin. If Dad called me Dianne, I knew I was in trouble.”
Her father, Frederick “Fred” Leonard Coste, 47, went to work Oct. 15, 1959, at the Family Finance Corporation in downtown Cedar Rapids. Her mother, Betty, went to the dentist for a tooth extraction. She was at home with her grandmother, Louise Coste — Fred’s mother — who lived with the family.
After leaving the dentist office, her mom had to pick up a prescription and decided to walk over to Fred’s office at 312 Second Ave. SE, which is now a parking garage.
When Betty got near the office, she saw police cars with flashing lights. Officers stopped her and wouldn’t let her go inside. She didn’t know what was going on.
“I really don’t remember much,” said Martin, now 71 and living in Alabama. “I was so sick. I’m not sure it registered at the time. My grandma fell apart when she heard about my dad. I remember my mom was upset but she was a strong woman. She had to be for my grandma.”
Martin never thought that kiss on her forehead would be the last from her father. And she never thought his slaying would turn into an unsolved cold case 64 years later.
“I wanted for whoever did this to be found,” Martin, becoming emotional, said. “I wanted him to burn in hell. I wanted him to suffer, and sometimes I still do.”
Details of crime
Fred Coste was discovered by two loan applicants, Thomas McMurrin and Donald McSpadden, about 11:35 a.m. that day, on his back surrounded in blood, Cedar Rapids police Investigator Matt Denlinger said in reviewing the original cold case file.
The two men went downstairs to the De Var Diner, which was below the office, and found a police officer, Donald Hollister, who contacted detectives, George Matias and Roy Walker. They arrived about 11:55 a.m. at the scene with an identification officer.
Denlinger, a member of the department’s Cold Case Unit, said there was evidence of a struggle in one of the cubicles where Coste was likely consulting with a client. The office made small loans and kept cash on hand.
“The table had been pushed back against the wall with a chair behind it,” Denlinger said. “There was a manila folder that Fred was looking at with a customer’s name on it — he was clearly a person of interest. The detective’s notes indicated there was “probably an argument over an application for a loan that Fred had turned down.”
Coste was stabbed in the chest six times with a “heavy object,” Denlinger said. One of those stab wounds punctured his heart, according to the coroner.
The detectives also found “partial bloody hand prints” on a drawer behind the counter and it was determined that $258 was missing from the cash drawer.
The person of interest’s file showed he had taken out a loan for $151.58 on Sept. 25, 1959, and there were what appeared to be blood droplets on the account sheet.
Who was Fred Coste
Denlinger said he is in “awe” of how thorough the detectives were and how quickly they collected evidence and created a “victimology” — a deep background report — on Coste.
When investigating a case, Denlinger said detectives want to look at the victim’s background to see if the crime happened because of the circumstances surrounding the victim. But there was nothing in Coste’s life or background that would lead detectives to an obvious killer.
Coste grew up in Little Falls, N.J., and served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946, which included World War II. Before serving, he sold Pontiac cars for a short time, then worked for National Life Insurance and then for a loan company in Atlanta, according to the case file.
No problems in the military. No disgruntled ex-girlfriends, investigators determine.
He started working for the Family Finance Corporation in 1949, then was called back to the military — this time for a stint in U.S. Air Force in 1950. He then returned to Family Finance in Charlotte, N.C., as a manager.
Coste had been robbed in the past, Denlinger noted. When he transferred to Baltimore, Md., a man in 1953 robbed that office at gunpoint. The suspect was captured within minutes and identified by Coste. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Coste was transferred to manage the Cedar Rapids office in 1958 and had been here only about 14 months before the fatal assault, Denlinger said.
A former secretary, who worked at the office the month before the slaying, spoke “highly” of Coste. But when the killing happened in October, he didn’t have a secretary in the office.
Coste would occasionally stop by a tavern, usually “Sammy’s” on First Street, for a beer and then go home, Denlinger said. There were no reports that he was a gambler or had any work issues. His wife would stop by the office in the afternoons to help.
The two men who found his body, McSpadden and McMurrin, agreed to take a polygraph — lie detector — test, which seemed to be a typical police tool back then to rule out suspects but “rarely” used today, Denlinger said. McSpadden and McMurrin passed and weren’t considered suspects.
A timeline was quickly established, Denlinger said. At 11:15 a.m., a Mrs. Charles Kenke reported she talked to Coste on the phone and his body was found at 11:35 a.m. — which left about a 20-minute window for the fatal attack.
Possible suspect
The customer whose file was found on the floor near Coste’s body was called by police within an hour of the homicide. He lived in the Cedar Hills neighborhood.
The “Cedar Hills man” — as Denlinger dubs him — denied being at the finance office. But when officers showed up at this house, he admitted to stopping by to inquire about a loan. He said this happened about 11 a.m., and he was told to bring back his wife to co-sign for the loan, which the detectives doubted was true. He also denied knowing anything about a homicide there.
The detectives couldn’t verify his timeline and obtained a search warrant for his home and vehicle. In the house, they found a handkerchief with what appeared to be blood stains. In the car, a bone-handled knife with blood stains was recovered.
T.C. McDermott, the identification officer, flew with the items for testing to the FBI lab outside Washington, D.C., within 24 hours of the homicide. The testing was completed within five hours, which is unheard today, Denlinger said. It usually takes weeks or months with backlogs at the state crime lab.
However, the test showed the blood on the knife wasn’t human. It was from “some sort of rodent.” No link was made between the potential suspect and the evidence.
The Cedar Hills man took a polygraph but the results must have been questionable. Denlinger found notes from a follow-up discussion with a University of Iowa professor about administering “truth serum.” That had apparently been used by other agencies at one time, but the professor said it was unreliable and it wasn’t done.
The possible suspect was released due to lack of evidence.
Denlinger said there were many notes on canvasses downtown and follow-up interviews, but no real leads. Detectives even had checked out any possible suspects who were traveling with the Clyde Bros. Circus out of Oklahoma that had been performing on May’s Island the day before, Oct. 14, 1959.
An interview with another former office secretary, Pat Thompson, gave the detectives another possibility for a murder weapon. She recalled that there had been a different letter opener than the one found in the office, and it was bigger and made of copper or dark in color.
Denlinger said it was unclear in the notes if investigators thought it might be the “heavy object” used to stab Coste, or if that letter opener had just been replaced by a new one. The larger letter opener was never found.
Daughter’s memories
Martin, a retired social worker, said her mother was so upset in the days following her dad’s death that they left for Chicago and stayed with a relative. She recalls spending a “beautiful” day on the lake with a cousin before going to Atlanta, where her mother’s parents lived.
That’s where they buried her father. Her mom didn’t want to go back to Cedar Rapids. It was too painful. They lived in Atlanta for a few years.
She remembered the military funeral for her dad, who was a staff sergeant during his service. She recalled hearing Taps and the flag was presented to her mother, which Martin received after her mother died.
Martin doesn’t recall much from her short time in Cedar Rapids. She remembers their house was at the top of a hill down the street from Quaker Oats. She remembers not liking the “awful cold” winters.
“My dad would call my mom and tell her to ‘put another sweater on Punkin, it’s 2 degrees out,’” Martin said.
She remembers her dad as “soft-spoken, mild mannered, very tall and handsome.” He never talked about his time in the war, her mom told her. She knew he was an airplane mechanic in the service, serving in France and Germany and later stationed in Georgia.
She has memories of helping her dad wash the car, which she loved, and playing at the playground and her dad pulling her down the slides.
Her dad loved their puppy, Puddles, a shepherd/collie mix. She learned how to walk holding the dog’s tail. Puddles died after getting bitten by a snake. She said her dad was “devastated.”
Coste would go out and collect on loans on the weekends and he would take his wife and daughter along.
“I remember going to the Amana Colonies for lunch and going to the diner downstairs from the office,” Martin said. “The popular song ‘Volare’ (a hit in 1958) was my favorite song and Dad knew the diner owner and he would rig up the jukebox to play it when we came in.”
Her mom always told her what a good man he was and her how much he loved his daughter.
“’The sun rose and set on you,’” her mom would say.
Martin said she has thought over the years how different her life would be if her dad hadn’t been killed. “But I might not have my three fabulous children and three grandchildren. I don’t know.”
As Martin got older, she had such empathy for her mother because “Dad was the love of her life” and it was heartache to lose him in such a brutal way. Her mom suddenly was a single mom with a young child to support.
She worked different jobs over the years, including an optical retail store and in the medical records office of a hospital. Her mom never remarried. One time, she had a boyfriend when Martin was a senior in high school and thought about getting married.
“I asked her if she loved him and she said, ‘I loved your dad,’” Martin said. She didn’t get married.”
Coste met his future wife when he was selling insurance door-to-door in Atlanta. After he left, Betty told her mom she was going to marry that man.
They dated for less than a year and got married in 1939, Martin said. He wanted to buy her a diamond but she didn’t want one. Betty wasn’t a “ring person.” Instead, she settled on a rose gold watch and wore it for many years.
Martin said she remained close to her mother even after leaving Ohio, where her mother stayed. Betty Coste died in 1982 from cancer.
“She was an amazing, strong woman,” Martin said. “She had to be mom and dad for me.”
Recent work on cold case
Denlinger said that in 2007, there was big push in the department to look at Cedar Rapids cold cases. Specimen and hair samples from Coste had been collected for future testing, and now-retired Investigator Doug Larison sent those in for further testing. But nothing significant was discovered.
Larison followed up on the “Cedar Hills man” and learned he was living out West. In 2013, retired Capt. Jeff Mellgren, who worked as a volunteer for the Cold Case Unit, traveled to his home for an interview. The man was 83 years old at the time.
His story had changed some from 1959. He said he was given “truth serum,” which didn’t happen, according to the case file. Mellgren was hoping for a confession but didn’t get one.
Denlinger said it was difficult to decipher from the case notes if this man was lying or maybe, based on his age, having memory problems.
Last year, the unit took another look at this case and realized investigators didn’t have a good DNA profile from the victim to use for comparison in further forensic testing, Denlinger said. The specimen samples collected from Coste in 1959 were tested in 2007 but were “too degraded to yield any results.”
Denlinger set out to find Coste’s daughter to collect DNA from her, but unfortunately all the reports listed her only as “7-year-old daughter.” He searched for an obituary of Coste but only found a burial location on Gravefinder.com.
He called the cemetery in Atlanta. An employee there found a note in Coste’s file from 1982 about a woman, Dianne Martin of Columbus, Ohio, who said she was his daughter and wanted to sell the plot next to his.
Next, he called the Columbus Police Department’s Cold Case Unit for help, and officers there found out Martin had moved to Alabama.
Denlinger eventually found her phone number and coordinated with Alabama police to take a DNA sample from her. Those were sent to him, and he provided them to the state crime lab in Ankeny. Martin’s sample is being used for comparison to the profile developed from the blood evidence found on the floor at Family Finance in 1959.
Denlinger said he didn’t know if the testing would show anything. At this point, he is trying to get answers for Martin. He’s fairly sure he has identified the killer, but is doubtful it will lead to an arrest. All the officers from the case are dead and there’s no living witnesses to testify at a trial. And the suspect, if still alive, may never confess.
This case is much different from 18-year-old Michelle Martinko, who was killed in 1979 and went unsolved for 39 years until 2018. Denlinger had DNA evidence of the killer, Jerry Burns, and the witnesses needed for trial were still alive.
Martin said she needs closure, in whatever form that happens. If she finds out the killer is dead, it might give her that.
“I still have hope,” Martin said. “I hope Matt will find something that will blow it wide-open.”
Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com
Property markets move in cycles, and with interest rates rising and other pressures like high fuel costs, some markets are clearly slowing down. Many first-home buyers who have only ever seen markets going up are conditioned to think that when purchasing, competition is always intense and decisions need to be made quickly.
In those times, buyers often feel they need to act fast, stretch their budget and secure a property at almost any cost. But things have definitely changed.
In a softer market, the dynamic shifts. Properties take longer to sell, competition thins, and it’s the vendors who begin to feel pressure.
RELATED
For buyers who understand how to navigate that change, the balance of power quickly moves in their favour. The opportunity is not simply to buy at a lower price. It is to negotiate from a position of strength.
If that’s you right now, these are the key skills first-home buyers need to take advantage of in softer market conditions.
The most important shift in a soft market is psychological. In a rising market, buyers often feel like they are competing for limited opportunities. In a softer market, the opposite is true. There are more properties available, fewer active buyers and less urgency overall. This gives buyers options.
When buyers understand that they are not competing with multiple parties on every property, their decision-making improves. They are more willing to walk away, compare opportunities and avoid overpaying. Negotiation strength comes from not needing to transact immediately. When that pressure is removed, buyers are able to engage more strategically.
One of the most common mistakes first-home buyers make is continuing to apply strategies that only work in rising markets. Auction urgency is a clear example. In strong markets, auctions often attract multiple bidders and create competitive tension. In softer conditions, properties are more likely to pass in, shifting the process away from a public bidding environment into a private negotiation.
This is where leverage increases.
Private negotiations allow buyers to introduce conditions that protect their position. These may include finance clauses, longer settlement periods or price adjustments based on due diligence. Opportunities that are rarely available in competitive markets become standard in softer ones.
The Board of Visitors Finance Committee met Thursday and approved a 3.6 percent average increase in tuition, a 4.8 percent average increase in meal plan costs and a 5 percent increase in the cost of double-room housing for the 2026-27 school year. The approval was unanimous amongst Board members, though some expressed resistance to the increases before voting in favor of them.
The Committee heard from Jennifer Wagner Davis, executive vice president and chief operating officer, and Donna Price Henry, chancellor of the College at Wise, about reasons for the raise in tuition and rates. According to Davis and Henry, salary increases for professors and legislation passed by the General Assembly contribute to tuition and rates increases.
The Finance Committee, chaired by Vice Rector Victoria Harker, is responsible for the University’s financial affairs and business operations, and the Committee manages the budget, tuition and student fees.
Changes in tuition vary between schools, with the School of Law seeing at most a 5.1 percent increase, the School of Engineering & Applied Science seeing at most a 3.2 percent increase and the College of Arts and Sciences seeing at most a 3.1 percent increase in tuition for the 2026-27 school year.
For the 2026-27 school year at the College at Wise, the Committee also unanimously approved a 2.5 percent average increase in tuition, a 3.8 percent increase in meal plans and a 2 percent increase in the cost of housing.
Last year, the Committee approved a 3 percent average increase in tuition, a 5.5 percent increase in meal plans and a 5.5 percent increase in the cost of housing for the University.
Davis cited increased costs as the primary reason for the approved increase in tuition. She said that the budget that could be passed by the General Assembly for June 30, 2027 through June 30, 2028 could increase professor salaries — University professors receive raises via this process. Davis said that the Senate and House of Delegates have separate proposals dealing with the pay increases that are currently unresolved, with House Bill 30 raising salaries by 2 percent and Senate Bill 30 raising salaries by 3 percent.
Davis said every percent increase in faculty salaries costs the University $15 million annually, and the Commonwealth will increase funding to the University by $1-2 million to help pay for that increase. According to Davis, the most common way to stabilize the budgetary imbalance caused by raised salaries is through tuition raises.
Beyond the increase in salary, Davis cited the minimum wage increase, inflation and Virginia Military Survivors & Dependents Education Program as increased costs to the University. VMSDEP is a program that gives education benefits to spouses and children of disabled veterans or military service members killed, missing in action or taken prisoner. Davis said that the program is “partially unfunded” and could cost the University somewhere between $3.6 to $6 million, depending on how many students qualify for the program.
Davis spoke on other contributing factors to the increase in tuition, specifically collective bargaining — which allows workers to bargain for better wages and working conditions.
“If we look at other institutions or other states that have collective bargaining, [collective bargaining] does put an upward pressure on tuition,” Davis said.
Prior to Thursday’s meeting, the Committee heard the proposal for tuition increases from Davis and Henry April 6 in a Finance Committee tuition workshop with public comment. During the tuition workshop, tuition increases ranged from 3 to 4.5 percent for the University and 2 to 3 percent for the College at Wise. Both increases approved Thursday are within the ranges originally proposed.
Meal plan costs, on average, will be increasing by 4.8 percent in the upcoming academic year. Davis said that the University has been expanding dining options with the opening of the Gaston House and new locations for the Ivy Corridor student housing that is still in progress. She also said that the University has been taking steps to increase the availability of allergen-friendly food options.
Davis shared that the 5 percent cost increase in housing is due to the expansion of student housing in the Ivy Corridor. Davis also said that there will be 3,000 new units added to the Charlottesville housing market by 2027, of which 780 beds will be for University housing. Davis said that she hopes the Ivy Corridor housing would “free up” the city housing supply by having more students live on Grounds.
Board member Amanda Pillion said she was “concerned” about how tuition increases would harm rural families — she said the constant increases in cost could make a University education out of reach for middle-income Virginians.
“This is the second governor I’ve served under. Both times I’ve heard affordability, affordability, affordability,” Pillion said. “We need to really be conscious of the fact that … there is a large group of people that [are middle-income] that these increases [in tuition and fees] are really tough for.”
The Committee also approved a renovation for The Park — an 18-acre recreational hub in North Grounds — which will cost $10 million. As part of the renovation, The Park will include a maintenance facility, storm water systems and a maintenance access route. Davis said the renovation will address safety and security issues for the 200 people that use The Park daily. According to Davis, the University will use $2 million of institutional funds and issue $8 million of debt to fund the renovation.
The Finance Committee will reconvene during the regularly scheduled June Board meetings.
Finance
A Protracted US–Iran War Could Strain Climate Finance From Wealthy Countries to Developing Nations – Inside Climate News
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The ongoing war in Iran is casting a long shadow over the climate finance commitments countries agreed to in 2024, experts warned, as surging oil prices and rising defense budgets put further pressure on the limited pot of money developing nations are counting on to stave off worsening impacts from a warming planet.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s annual spring meetings are underway in the capital this week, with a focus on a coordinated global response to a world economy under pressure from slower growth and rising debt, exacerbating global inequities.
The U.S. war in Iran adds new supply-chain challenges. In a press briefing Tuesday, the IMF slashed its growth forecast to 3.1 percent for the year, down from 3.3 percent in January, with global inflation rising to 4.4 percent.
“Our severe scenario assumes that energy supply disruptions extend into next year, with greater macro instability. Global growth falls to 2 percent this year and next, while inflation exceeds 6 percent,” said Pierre‑Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s director of research.
The blunt assessment has caused a scramble to determine what financial support the institution can offer to member states. And it has raised fresh questions about climate-finance obligations, already under strain from donor-country budget cuts and the United States jettisoning global climate commitments under the second Trump administration. One of President Donald Trump’s first actions back in office last year was ordering the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, wealthier countries that promised climate finance have experienced widening fiscal deficits and rising debt, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found in its latest assessment. As a result, aid from donor countries has already declined sharply—dropping almost 25 percent in 2025 compared to 2024. Even before the Iran conflict began, that was projected to drop further this year.
COP29, the global climate conference held in late 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan, set a commitment of $300 billion per year by 2035, with a broader goal of reaching $1.3 trillion annually from public and private sources. Called the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), the arrangement replaced the previous $100 billion-a-year commitment that wealthy nations had met belatedly in 2022, two years after the deadline.
Developing nations widely criticized the $300 billion figure as grossly inadequate, given the scale of the climate crisis. These countries are among the least responsible for the pollution driving that crisis and among the hardest hit by its effects.
The Iran war has triggered a new set of worries as top economists and experts weigh potential impact and likely mitigation strategies.
“Even before the Iran conflict, reaching the NCQG target would have been difficult, particularly with the U.S. withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. The war worsens the outlook,” said Gautam Jain, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
He said sustained disruption of the Strait of Hormuz would exacerbate the problem and the effects would weigh on the global economy. As a result, aid budgets would decline and the political pushback to external spending would increase.
The conflict is “pushing energy security to the forefront of government agendas,” Jain said. That will likely strengthen incentives to deploy more renewables and other forms of domestic clean energy, but the war’s economic convulsions could cut both ways for the energy transition.
“In low-income countries, the transition could be significantly delayed, given limited fiscal capacity to absorb sustained energy price shocks,” Jain said.
One of the main priorities for the World Bank during the meetings in Washington is to develop a new Climate Change Action Plan to replace the one expiring in June. “In the current geopolitical context, progress on this front looks quite unlikely,” Jain said.
Jon Sward, environment project manager at the Bretton Woods Project, which monitors World Bank and IMF policies, said countries that used to fund climate finance are now choosing to spend that money on other priorities.
This story is funded by readers like you.
Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.
Donate Now
The Gulf crisis exposed the fragility of a global economic system tethered to fossil fuel extraction and use, Sward noted. For countries dependent on fossil fuel imports, “this is yet another price shock, and quickly diversifying to renewables is certainly an option that many countries are looking at,” he said in an email.
He said that although multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF have begun to assess the conflict’s fallout, it is not yet clear what their response will be or how the World Bank’s climate finance would be affected.
“All of this points to the need for more serious discussions on pausing debt repayments for affected countries and the mobilisation of non-debt creating forms of finance, in order to address the multiple, overlapping shocks facing countries in the Global South, in particular,” he said in his email.
Experts said that rising security and defense expenditures were also cutting into an already limited pot of money badly needed by developing countries struggling to cope with climate challenges.
“The system was already too fragile given that the U.S. leads all the major multilateral development banks … and has disavowed these targets,” said Kevin Gallagher, director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University. On top of that, he said, U.S. threats to abandon NATO’s European countries incentivizes them to prioritize defense budgets over climate finance.
He said developing countries are already under pressure to cough up climate funding on their own. The current conflict could make that nearly impossible.
“This year was supposed to be putting together a roadmap to take the $300 billion annual target to the agreed upon $1.3 trillion. This is likely to be abandoned unless new donors such as [the] UAE, China and others step in to fill the gap left from the West,” Gallagher said in an email.
The crisis in the Persian Gulf makes the loudest case for renewables, he said. “The energy security argument from this conflict is to diversify from fossil fuels. The Dutch took that cue after the Middle East oil shock of the 1970s to build the world’s best wind turbines, and China did after Middle East conflicts in this century. Fossil fuels are now a bad bet on security, economic and climate grounds. The writing is on the wall.”
Gallagher said the World Bank should accelerate solar and wind technology programs across the world. “If the Fund and the Bank don’t rise to this occasion,” he said, “not only is the global economy and climate at stake, but so is the legitimacy of these institutions.”
Gaia Larsen, a climate finance expert at the World Resources Institute, said it’s too early to know whether stronger interest in energy independence through renewables is translating into shifts in investment. But “if we’re trying to think about long-term peace and long-term access to energy, then renewables are really increasing in prominence,” she said.
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
Aman Azhar
Reporter, Washington, D.C.
Aman Azhar is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who covers environmental justice for Inside Climate News with focus on Baltimore-Maryland area. He has previously worked as a broadcast journalist and multimedia producer for the BBC World Service, VOA News and other international news organizations, reporting from London, Islamabad, the United Arab Emirates and New York. He holds a graduate degree in Anthropology of Media from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an MA in Political Science from the University of the Punjab, and is the recipient of the Chevening scholarship from the UK government and an academic scholarship for graduate studies from the Australian government.
-
Fitness4 minutes agoI’m a running coach — I’ve just tested shoes actually designed for women’s feet, and they’re a total game changer
-
Movie Reviews16 minutes ago‘Hen’ movie review: György Pálfi pecks at Europe’s migrant crisis through the eyes of a chicken
-
Business46 minutes agoVideo: Why Your Paycheck Feels Smaller
-
Culture1 hour agoFamous Authors’ Less Famous Books
-
Lifestyle1 hour agoSunday Puzzle: For Mimi
-
Technology1 hour agoThe future of local TV news has taken a Trumpian turn
-
World2 hours agoPope Leo says remarks about world being ‘ravaged by a handful of tyrants’ were not aimed at Trump: report
-
Politics2 hours agoTrump renews bridge, power plant threat against Iran in push for deal, mocks ‘tough guy’ IRGC