Disasters

"Ethiopia expects to open a tender to buy additional wheat after purchasing one million tonnes to tackle extreme food shortages due to drought, a senior official said on Wednesday."

"Walking down almost any street in Seattle’s historic downtown, Eric Holdeman sees danger. Holdeman ran the King County Office of Emergency Management for 11 years. He doesn’t think the area around Pioneer Square would do well in a powerful earthquake."

"Nine people are now confirmed dead, and a further 19 remain unaccounted for as a slow-motion environmental catastrophe continues to unfold following the collapse of two mining dams in Brazil’s mineral-rich state of Minas Gerais."

"Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo rejected a proposal on Thursday to build the first port for liquefied natural gas in New York State, saying it would pose a threat to the environment and make an inviting target for terrorists."

"Waterkeeper Alliance surveyed 250 bridges used by trains carrying volatile crude oil; there are more than 100K in the US".

"Fire chiefs from California, Idaho, Washington and other vulnerable states reinforced on Monday the Obama administration’s campaign against climate change."

"Dispersants used to encourage the oil's breakdown actually hindered microbes that were helping clean-up the huge slick, says new research."

"After a ruptured oil pipeline went undiscovered for 17 hours, spilling 800,000 gallons of heavy oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010, Congress ordered an audit that laid bare the industry's lackluster record of spotting leaks. But after five years of work, the Obama administration has proposed a regulatory overhaul that fails to patch that hole in the nation’s pipeline safety net — a revelation that has been largely ignored amid Washington's obsession with the Keystone XL pipeline."

"Of 32 BNSF train cars that hurtled off the tracks near Alma, Wis., on Saturday, five of them broke open and spilled at least 18,000 gallons of ethanol into the Mississippi River, the railroad company said."