Oil being shipped was treated, company says
BISMARCK, N.D. – A shipment of oil involved in an explosive train derailment in North Dakota had been treated to reduce its volatility – a move that state officials suggested could have reduced the severity of the accident but won’t prevent others from occurring.
Hess Corp. spokesman John Roper said the oil complied with a state order requiring propane, butane and other volatile gases to be stripped out of crude before it’s transported.
Despite the treatment of the crude in Wednesday’s accident, six cars carrying a combined 180,000 gallons of oil caught fire in the derailment 2 miles from the town of small Heimdal in central North Dakota. The town was evacuated, but no one was hurt.
Appeals court calls NSA program illegal
NEW YORK – The unprecedented and unwarranted bulk collection of the entire U.S. population’s phone records by the government is illegal because it wasn’t authorized by Congress, a federal appeals court said Thursday as it asked legislators to balance national security and privacy interests.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan permitted the National Security Agency program to continue temporarily as it exists, but it all but pleaded for Congress to better define where boundaries exist or risk “invasions of privacy unimaginable in the past.”
Associated Press
