"Scuffles between protesters and security guards marred BP's first annual shareholder meeting since the Gulf oil spill Thursday, as investors registered their disapproval with sizable protest votes against company directors."
The fiscal year 2011 budget deal just passed by Congress slashes funds for weather satellites. That may hurt the bottom lines of small and large businesses from farming to shipping and insurance that depend on accurate weather forecasts. It is also wasteful of taxpayer funds, since the temporary budget cut is just show, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and laid-off workers in the program will need to be hired back at greater cost. It may also mean that people will die in weather disasters.
"With everything Big Oil and the government have learned in the year since the Gulf of Mexico disaster, could it happen again? Absolutely, according to an Associated Press examination of the industry and interviews with experts on the perils of deep-sea drilling."
"The operator of Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear plant said Friday it would pay an initial $12,000 for each household forced to evacuate because of leaking radiation — a handout some of the displaced slammed as too little."
"We're one week away from the first anniversary of the worst oil spill in the nation's history, and to commemorate it, House Republicans spent Wednesday marking up a trio of bills that would dramatically increase drilling in the US."
"The Davis Besse incident has resurfaced in the wake of the ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant. Stories recounting close ties between Japanese nuclear regulators and utilities there have reinvigorated critics who say the NRC has not been an aggressive enough U.S. watchdog."
"A year after the worst oil spill to strike U.S. waters, oyster beds are struggling along the Gulf of Mexico, the dolphin population is experiencing what the federal government calls an 'unusual mortality event,' and red snapper with rotting fins are showing up on fishing lines."
"The Red River was spreading out in a record swath across broad stretches of rural North Dakota and Minnesota on Tuesday and swelling toward a near-record crest in Grand Forks expected within three days."
"To reach a lost American place, here just a moment ago, follow a thin country road as it unspools across an Appalachian valley’s grimy floor, past a coal operation or two, a church or two, a village called Twilight. Beware of the truck traffic. Watch out for that car-chasing dog."
"Japanese officials struggled through the day on Tuesday to explain why it had taken them a month to disclose large-scale releases of radioactive material in mid-March at a crippled nuclear power plant, as the government and an electric utility disagreed on the extent of continuing problems there."
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