"As he prepared to visit Chernobyl 25 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlined a five-step plan to strengthen global nuclear safety."
"Calmer winds and higher humidity on Wednesday gave the army of firefighters battling several major blazes in north and west Texas hope of halting the worst wildfires in the state's history."
"A blowout at a natural gas well in rural northern Pennsylvania spilled thousands of gallons of chemical-laced water Wednesday, contaminating a stream and leading officials to ask seven families who live nearby to evacuate as crews struggled to stop the gusher."
BP's response to the Gulf spill disaster often made it seem callous and arrogant. It was a textbook example of how not to do public relations.
"BP Plc filed a lawsuit for more than $42 billion against Halliburton, which cemented the blown-out well which caused the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, after claiming a similar sum from rig owner Transocean."
"Last spring, as BP's unchecked gusher of oil began to spread across the Gulf of Mexico, University of Miami oceanographer Jerald Ault tried to answer the question that was on everyone's lips: What will this do to the Gulf?"
Denial of news media access to Gulf beaches has been an issue since the Deepwater Horizon disaster. There's tussling over access to (and interpretation of) scientific information on possible impacts of the spill on the Gulf ecosystem. And The Guardian obtained >30,000 pages of BP in-house memos FOIA'd by Greenpeace, which suggest BP was working hard to influence the results of the research it was paying for.
"Federal regulators [Tuesday] reopened commercial and recreational fishing in all federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico that were closed to fishing due to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill."
"The Japanese government is considering whether to impose legal controls on access to an evacuated area around a damaged nuclear power plant, a senior official said on Wednesday."
Today is the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon blowout that caused a catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The consequences to people, natural resources, and industries are still happening, and just beginning to be understood. BP is making profits, paying dividends, and having protestors from the Gulf hustled out of its shareholder meetings by police. The tarballs? Security guards patrolling Louisiana public beaches still prevent journalists from filming them. The $20 billion in compensation set aside by BP has not prevented many people from feeling that their lives have been ruined by the event. Elected officials have resumed the chant: "Drill, baby, drill." Now Freedom-of-Information requests have brought to light documentation that the UK government refused to go to war in Iraq without guarantees that BP and other British firms would get a share of the conquered nation's oil.
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