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Just turned on the news. 35W bridge collapsed in the Mississippi River. Cars, trucks, semis..... Fires burning, tanker trucks, at least one school bus, more than ten cars...... Just now breaking.......

BP's board and London-based executives were informed of widespread corrosion at the UK oil giant's Alaska field two years before the company was forced to shut it this week, citing "unexpectedly severe corrosion". On May 22 2004, Chuck Hamel, an advocate for BP workers in Alaska, took the charges directly to Walter E. Massey, chairman of the environment committee of BP's non-executive board of directors. In the letter, Mr Hamel told Dr Massey that in the previous four years BP employees and contract workers had brought to him concerns about safety, health and threats to the environment at Prudhoe Bay,...

Print this story | Email it to an associate. Vol. 11, No. 20 Week of May 14, 2006 Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry BP: Learning from oil spill lessonsJohnson, Beaudo explain what they think happened in Prudhoe Bay’s largest spill and what the company is learning from the incidentAlan BaileyPetroleum NewsOn March 2 a BP well pad operator discovered a leak in the transit line that delivers oil to the trans-Alaska pipeline from Gathering Center 2 in the western operating area of the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s North Slope. The...

<p>WASHINGTON - Experts have told NASA for years that simply covering the wings of a space shuttle while it sits on the launch pad could prevent a problem that investigators now think may have contributed to the destruction of the shuttle Columbia.</p>

Corrosion suggested in shuttle crash   Weakened wing may have been vulnerable to impact of debrisBy James ObergSPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM        IN RECENT DAYS, NASA officials have expressed their frustrated bafflement over the observed debris impact on Columbia’s left wing. They have repeated studies made during the flight and still come up with results that show the worst-case damage is still far short of a mortal wound that could have prompted the catastrophic failure of the wing.        If the falling insulating foam were the triggering event, some additional factor or factors must have been present,...