"WASHINGTON -- The Transportation Department issued an emergency order Wednesday requiring that railroads inform state emergency management officials about the movement of large shipments of crude oil through their states and urged shippers not to use older model tanks cars that are easily ruptured in accidents, even at slow speeds."

"The annual membership directory of state utility regulators lists several hundred key staff members of the 50 state commissions. Not a single staff position in the 81 pages has 'cybersecurity' in the title."

"As Washington environmental regulators start wrestling with the safety of new and larger fuel terminals along the Pacific Coast, some residents in southwest Washington communities are getting restless — with worries about the safety of crude oil shipped by rail to refineries and shipping docks."

"Strong storms have been moving over the Southeast since this weekend, spawning tornadoes from Alabama to Arkansas. On Tuesday they trekked further east, spreading heavy rain across the Alabama coast and Florida Panhandle. Rainfall totals for many cities in those regions were so high that they were closer to hurricane totals than spring storms."

"Americans at highest risk from accidents at chemical plants are largely from minority communities and are disproportionately poor — and industries and regulators are failing to take measures to make their situation any safer, according to a new study."

"A wind-driven brush fire burning out of control in a drought-parched Southern California wildland on Wednesday threatened a wealthy community in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents, officials said."

"At least 34 people were killed in tornadoes unleashed by a ferocious storm system that razed neighborhoods in the southern United States over the last three days and threatened more destruction in heavily populated parts of the South on Tuesday."

"The National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation of a freight train derailment in Lynchburg that destroyed three oil tanker cars, lifted a plume of black smoke into the sky and spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil into the James River."