"Cleanup crews fanned out across an oil-fouled California beach on Wednesday to scoop up gobs of petroleum spewed from a burst pipeline in what may be the biggest oil spill to hit the pristine but energy-rich Santa Barbara coastline in 46 years."
The watchdog group Center for Effective Government offers data tools that partly offset government failures to protect people from dangerous materials that poison or injure people, burn, or explode. They are also tools for journalists trying to inform their communities.
"When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, the landscape changed in an instant—the geologic version of an instant, anyway. It was the deadliest eruption the United States had ever seen, leveling everything for miles north of the mountain and blanketing ash as far as Montana. On the 35th anniversary of the event, the scars still shape the Cascade Mountains of Washington state."
"Conrad Ely drove from Olympia with three friends, a double kayak and a canoe."
"Royal Dutch Shell can drill oil exploration wells this summer in the Chukchi Sea, if Shell shows it can prevent and clean up a potential spill. Environmentalists are skeptical; Shell says it's ready."
"Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state's nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes, according to the dean's e-mail recounting the conversation.
"Commodity investors are in a twist about the weather. Warmer ocean temperatures last spring indicated an El Niño event was on the horizon, signaling buys, sells, and hedging positions in securities linked to products impacted by storms and droughts. Everything from sugar prices to coffee futures were retooled."
"Regulators overseeing the country’s electric grid want to set new rules to better protect it from disturbances caused by solar storms."
"Seven environmental groups filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging safety rules issued earlier this month for trains carrying oil, arguing the regulations are too weak to protect the public."
"President Barack Obama on Thursday called for greater federal spending on infrastructure in the wake of the deadly Amtrak crash that killed eight people."
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