Domestic Glance
The Texas plant that was the scene of a deadly explosion this week was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in 1985. The risk plan it filed with regulators listed no flammable chemicals. And it was cleared to hold many times the ammonium nitrate that was used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
For worker- and chemical-safety advocates who have been pushing the U.S. government to crack down on facilities that make or store large quantities of hazardous chemicals, the blast in West, Texas, was a grim reminder of the risks these plants pose. And they say regulators haven’t done enough to tackle the problem.
The Boy Scouts of America is proposing to get rid of its national ban on openly gay youth, while continuing to bar gay adults from serving as troop leaders.
Predicting a nightmarish air travel snarl that will stretch from coast to coast, the airline industry and the nation’s largest pilots union joined forces Friday to sue the Federal Aviation Administration over its decision to furlough air traffic controllers in order to achieve spending cuts required by Congress.
The fertilizer plant that exploded in West, Texas, killing more than a dozen people and causing widespread damage was cited and fined in 2006 for federal environmental violations, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.
In fact, in the last six months, there have been 172 IEDs reported in the United States, according to a government count that an official revealed Tuesday in answer to questions about U.S. preparedness. The official shared the figures, which were gathered before Monday’s explosion, only on the condition that neither the official nor the official’s office be identified.
