Disasters

"Chernobyl, Ukraine -- Against the decaying skyline here, a one-of-a-kind engineering project is rising near the remains of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster."

People in northern Mississippi and Alabama huddled in hallways and basements as a string of tornadoes ripped through their states Monday, a day after another line of storms killed 16 people to their west."

"The Department of Transportation is planning on sending a 'comprehensive' package of proposals regarding rail shipments of crude oil to the White House for its review [this] week."

"Tornadoes ripped through the south-central United States on Sunday, killing at least 17 people in Arkansas and Oklahoma and wiping out entire neighborhoods, authorities said as rescue workers searched in darkness for survivors."

"Wyoming explosion: The town of Opal, Wyoming was evacuated, but no injuries were reported in an explosion at a facility that removes impurities from natural gas and serves large numbers of customers in the West."

"A new study is asserting a link between climate change and both the intensifying California drought and the polar vortex blamed for the recent harsh winter."

"When a storm, such as Hurricane Sandy, sets waters in New York Harbor rising, those sloshing seas are now 20 times more likely to overtop the Manhattan seawall than 170 years ago, a new study finds."

"A day after Canada issued stringent new rules for the transportation of oil by rail, federal regulators in the United States said on Thursday that they would push forward their own tank standards next week, potentially resolving a critical safety issue that has been mired in regulatory limbo for years."

"In the ongoing battle over offshore drilling, a federal judge in Alaska told regulators Thursday to redo an environmental impact study that underestimated the amount of recoverable oil and, potentially, the risks to delicate Arctic habitat."

"The warming climate is melting sea ice, opening U.S. Arctic waters to shipping and oil and gas development, but the National Research Council warned today that U.S. personnel, equipment, transportation, communication, navigation, and safety resources are not adequate for an Arctic oil spill response."