Disasters

"America smashed the record for billion-dollar weather disasters this year with a deadly dozen – and counting."

"BEAVER, W.Va. -- Federal regulators on Tuesday blamed the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster on "a workplace culture that valued production over safety," and prosecutors said a record $200 million settlement could set the stage for broad industry reforms."

"Those who fled Futaba are among the nearly 90,000 people evacuated from a 12-mile zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant and another area to the northwest contaminated when a plume from the plant scattered radioactive cesium and iodine. Now, Japan is drawing up plans for a cleanup that is both monumental and unprecedented, in the hopes that those displaced can go home."

"BP Plc. accused Halliburton Co. of destroying evidence that the oilfield services company did inadequate cement work on the Gulf of Mexico oil well that blew out last year, and asked a federal judge to punish Halliburton."

"NEW ORLEANS -- The Obama administration has released a report on how the Gulf Coast can be restored following the nation's worst offshore oil spill after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana in April 2010. The report from the White House's Gulf of Mexico Ecosystem Restoration Task Force comes out the same week Congress considers a bill designed to handle billions of dollars in Clean Water Act fines BP is expected to pay for the release of more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf."

"TOKYO — At least 45 tons of highly radioactive water have leaked from a purification facility at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, and some of it may have reached the Pacific Ocean, the plant’s operator said Sunday."

"Thousands of survivors of the world's worst industrial accident are protesting for more compensation by blocking the trains in an Indian city."

"Worries about fires, explosions and chemical releases prompted the federal agency in charge of workplace safety on Wednesday to expand a special inspection program focusing on the nation's chemical plants. Regulators believe the industry is particularly vulnerable to such hazards, meriting the closer attention."

"Yet some plants will continue to be shielded from the special inspections, despite past worker deaths, because of their status as 'model workplaces.'

"The gusts that pummeled the western San Gabriel Valley, including Pasadena and La Cañada-Flintridge, were produced by two separate weather systems that channeled cold air from the north into the L.A. area."

"NEW ORLEANS — Under a new formula announced on Wednesday by Kenneth R. Feinberg, the administrator of the $20 billion fund set up by BP for victims of the 2010 oil spill, shrimp and crab fishermen along the Gulf Coast may be eligible for settlement payments significantly larger than what they were previously offered."