Disasters

"SEATTLE -- Utility crews have found a total of eight natural gas leaks in the north Seattle neighborhood where a home exploded, injuring two residents in a two-alarm fire."

"The United States secretly sought Japan's support in 1972 to enable it to dump decommissioned nuclear reactors into the world's oceans under the London Convention, an international treaty being drawn up at the time."

"SAN BRUNO -- Much of Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s natural-gas transmission system could be at risk of catastrophic failure, but the company's record-keeping system is so flawed that the true danger is impossible to determine, federal investigators said Monday in their final report on last year's San Bruno disaster."

"Even minuscule amounts of BP's crude oil has affected fish in profound ways in the Gulf of Mexico—even when oil in the water was nondetectable. This according to a paper in early view in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science)."

"Last week, when President Obama named New Jersey a federal disaster area for floods that came before Hurricane Irene, he cemented 2011’s ranking as the United States’ most disaster-prone year ever."

The Senate voted 79-12 Monday night to approve a bipartisan stopgap spending bill that funds some disaster relief from FEMA and and abandons controversial cuts to green energy programs. Democrats said they expected the seven-week funding extension to be approved by the GOP-led House, which is in pro forma session after most members went home.

"Photos and video of the haboob that ate Phoenix on July 5 went viral on the Internet. News stories worldwide predicted a hotter, drier, dustier future for the 'Southwest Dust Bowl.'"

"VIENNA, Austria -- Russia has decided to extend the life of a controversial generation of nuclear reactors like the one that catastrophically exploded at Chernobyl in 1986, the head of Russia's state-owned nuclear monopoly said."

"A bipartisan effort to secure at least 80 percent of fines from the BP Gulf oil spill for the five Gulf Coast states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas — advanced Wednesday as the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved the bill by voice vote."