Los Angeles, California – Kern County — in southern California — was under a state of emergency Wednesday as a result of spreading wildfires that have destroyed 25 homes, caused more than 2,300 people to evacuate and burned 15,000 acres. On Tuesday afternoon, firefighters were called to a new wild fire southeast of Tehachapi....
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Over three decades of oil drilling in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Texaco (now Chevron) dumped more than 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the rainforest, creating an environmental tragedy experts call “the Amazon Chernobyl.” This systematic contamination has left tens of thousands of local indigenous people and campesinos suffering an epidemic of cancer, miscarriages,...
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WASHINGTON – Several U.S. government agencies are preparing a criminal probe of at least three companies involved in the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, though it could take more than a year before any charges are filed, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. BP Plc, Transocean Ltd and Halliburton Co are...
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BARCELONA – The Catalan parliament dealt the death blow to bullfighting in the region on Wednesday, outlawing the centuries-old spectacle for the first time in mainland Spain. The result of 68 in favor, 55 against the ban was expected, since Catalonia’s parliament had accepted a citizens’ petition to stop bullfighting with activists concerned about...
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BEIRUT – The discovery of large natural gas reserves under the waters of the eastern Mediterranean could potentially mean a huge economic windfall for Israel and Lebanon, both resource-poor nations — if it doesn’t spark new war between them. The Hezbollah militant group has blared warnings that Israel plans to steal natural gas from...
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LONDON — Robert Dudley, BP’s newly appointed chief executive, said Tuesday that the oil giant remained committed to its business in the United States as it moved to sell $30 billion in assets before 2012 to pay for costs related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP on Tuesday set aside...
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Widespread power outages and mandatory water conservation continued to complicate commutes and daily routines after storms Sunday knocked out power to much of Montgomery County, parts of Prince George’s County and across the Washington region. Substation outages and downed power lines have made restoring electricity to more than 228,000 customers a “multiday effort,” Pepco...
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Chinese officials said one of the nation’s worst oil spills had been cleaned up 10 days after a massive explosion sent an estimated 1,500 tons of crude into the Yellow Sea along the northeastern port city of Dalian. “This is a victory,” the city’s mayor, Li Wancai, said on Monday in an interview with...
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will unveil as early as Monday a slimmed-down energy bill seeking to make offshore drilling safer and convert trucks to run on domestic natural gas. The full Senate could begin consideration of Reid’s bill on Tuesday and Democrats would like to pass it by the early...
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As the first reports of the Gulf of Mexico oil-rig explosion trickled in to BP’s London headquarters in April, BP chief executive Tony Hayward wondered whether to fly immediately to the United States. One veteran of the company advised Hayward to keep his head down, saying, “There’s no sense being Napoleon unless you can...
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