Disasters

"Security researcher Brian Wallace was on the trail of hackers who had snatched a California university's housing files when he stumbled into a larger nightmare: Cyberattackers had opened a pathway into the networks running the United States' power grid."

"As Congress headed home for the Christmas break after passing a budget deal, Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack presented lawmakers with an angry ultimatum: Put up more cash if you want the U.S. Forest Service to keep putting out huge wildfires."

"A consulting firm that helped write a report underestimating the risks of catastrophic spills from a proposed Vancouver oil train terminal has worked for two groups that will gain financially if the project moves forward."

"Just east of the Homestead-Miami Speedway, off Florida's Biscayne Bay, two nuclear reactors churn out enough electricity to power nearly a million homes. The Turkey Point plant is licensed to continue doing so until at least 2032. At some point after that, if you believe the direst government projections, a good part of the low-lying site could be underwater. So could at least 13 other U.S. nuclear plants, as the world’s seas continue to rise."

"For months, worried parents in Flint, Mich., arrived at their pediatricians’ offices in droves. Holding a toddler by the hand or an infant in their arms, they all have the same question: Are their children being poisoned?"

"Ethiopia's government has increased to 10.1 million the estimated number of people who desperately need food aid because of a drought."

"Imagine an oil slick quickly growing through the Straits of Mackinac from a rupture of the 62-year-old, twin pipelines known as Line 5 traversing the bottom of where Lakes Michigan and Huron connect."

"A fire on an oil platform in the Caspian Sea burned on Monday for a fourth day, and the Azerbaijani company that operates the site warned that the fire could spread to the oil wells that feed the platform, heightening the risk of a spill."

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has petitioned the federal agency that regulates hazardous materials transport to set limits on the volatility of oil shipped by rail -- a major factor in explosions.

Major parts of the coastal United States are in the same boat as vulnerable, low-lying nations and islands when it comes to climate-driven sea level rise and extreme weather, says Thomas Lovejoy, a noted ecologist.