Seven U.S. Marines were killed and at least seven other people injured during a training exercise in western Nevada last night, Marine Corps officials announced today. The Marines, members of a ground combat unit based in Camp Lejeune, N.C., died in an explosion.

An employee checking asphalt levels from the top of a tank died after falling 15 feet and hitting his head on a concrete structure supporting the tank. The September 2012 accident at Corvallis, Mont.-based M.R. Asphalt Inc. resulted in 16 safety and health violations, including one willful for failing to provide a guardrail or fall protection on the working surface.

A Wellington, New Zealand company has been fined over a subcontractor's five-and-a-half metre fall at work, according to TVNZ. The worker received a broken pelvis and facial injuries in the fall while installing plant and equipment at Silver Fern Farms' Te Aroha freezing works following significant fire damage in January last year.

A new compilation, ASTM Standards for Accident and Disaster Control, is now available on CD-ROM from ASTM International. The compilation includes 185 of the latest ASTM standards for accident and emergency management from ASTM Committees E54 on Homeland Security; F12 on Security Systems; F32 on Search and Rescue; and F30 on Emergency Medical Services.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced that it is investigating a collison Monday between the oil tanker Overseas Reymar and one of the supports of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

An inattentive driver and faulty brakes due to an improperly maintained vehicle were the probable cause of an accident in which a heavy commercial truck struck a California-bound Amtrak passenger train in the Nevada desert last summer killing six and injuring 16, the National Transportation Safety Board has revealed.

The National Transportation Safety Board is recommending that the U.S. Coast Guard increase its post-accident drug and alcohol testing standards to the level of those required of merchant mariners.
 

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating an accident in Midland, Texas, in which a Union Pacific freight train struck a flatbed semi-trailer being used as a parade float at a grade crossing last week.

In a settlement announced this afternoon by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, BP has agreed to pay approximately $4.5 billion and plead guilty to criminal charges in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion led to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

The New Mexico Environment Department says it’s reached a settlement with Navajo Refining of Artesia for citations issued by the Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau, or New Mexico OSHA.