Disasters

As the Flint water crisis was being discovered, Michigan environmental officials tried to manipulate exemptions in the state's freedom of information law to keep secret emails that should have been subject to disclosure.

"Japan on Friday marked the fifth anniversary of the 2011 tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and left a devastated coastline along the country's northeast that has still not been fully rebuilt."

"A slow-moving storm dumped more rain on the waterlogged U.S. South on Thursday after heavy downpours killed at least four people this week, prompting evacuations and rescues from inundated areas."

"Flint Mayor Karen Weaver has suspended water billing temporarily — for about a month — while the city works out how it will apply $30 million from the State of Michigan to help residents who’ve paid for nearly two years for water that’s unsafe to drink."

"Heavy rains and high winds from a storm system moving north from Mexico flooded parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, leaving at least one person dead, officials said on Wednesday."

"Duke Energy has appealed the state’s $6.8 million fine involving the Dan River coal ash spill, calling the action “entirely arbitrary and capricious” and requesting “dismissal of the ... civil penalty in its entirety.”"

"Facing a six-year barrage of increasingly large earthquakes, Oklahoma regulators are effectively ordering the state’s powerful oil-and-gas industry to substantially cut back the underground disposal of industry wastes that have caused the tremors across the state."

"A lawsuit stemming from Flint's lead-contaminated water was filed Monday on behalf of the city's residents against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder as well as other current and former government officials and corporations."

"An indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon took at least eight public officials hostage to demand help from the central government after an oil spill polluted its lands, authorities said Monday."

"Almost 16 million people face hunger in Southern Africa because of a drought exacerbated by an El Nino weather pattern and that number could climb to almost 50 million, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday."