Disasters

"A dead zone -- already the size of the state of New Jersey -- is growing in the Gulf of Mexico, fueled by nutrient runoff from the swollen Mississippi River."

"Opponents of a pipeline that would nearly double U.S. imports of Canadian oil-sands crude sued the State Department today in a bid to force speedy disclosure of any contacts it made with a lobbyist for the pipeline's sponsor."

"Five years before the crucial emergency vents at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were disabled by an accident they were supposed to help handle, engineers at a reactor in Minnesota warned American regulators about that very problem."

"Cargo was slowly moving along the bloated Mississippi River after a costly daylong standstill, while officials kept an eye on the lower Delta where thousands of acres of farmland could be swamped by water that is inching closer to the top of a levee."

"Emergency vents that American officials have said would prevent devastating hydrogen explosions at nuclear plants in the United States were put to the test in Japan — and failed to work, according to experts and officials with the company that operates the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant."

Japanese authorities for years discounted and ignored warnings that precisely the kind of quake-tsunami disaster that happened at the Fukushima plant could happen at other nuclear plants.

The Army Corps of Engineers this weekend began opening Louisiana's Morganza Spillway, which should protect New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and the chemical corridor from the worst of the record Mississippi River flood. But it will flood thousands of homes in Cajun country.