Crews clean up 10,000 gallons of oil that sprayed onto LA streets
LOS ANGELES — A geyser of oil sprayed onto buildings and puddled in knee-high pools of crude in Los Angeles streets after a valve on a high-pressure pipeline failed Thursday.
About 10,000 gallons of oil spewed 20 feet high over approximately half a mile of the industrial area of Atwater Village about 12:15 a.m., Fire Capt. Jaime Moore said.
Four commercial businesses near the border of Glendale were affected, as well as a strip club that was evacuated after oil came through air vents. The parking lot was closed, and patrons and employees were forced to leave behind their crude-coated cars.
Crews were able to remotely shut off the 20-inch line after about 45 minutes.
“Inspectors went right to the failed valve. They knew right away where the problem originated,” Moore said. Determining exactly what caused the failure would take some time, he said.
Judge removes barriers to gay marriage in Arkansas, appeals court puts Idaho plans on hold
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Gay marriages quickly resumed in Arkansas on Thursday after a state judge whose previous order had sown confusion among county clerks expanded his ruling to remove all vestiges of same-sex marriage bans from the state’s laws.
The Arkansas Supreme Court had said Wednesday that a law that kept clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples remained on the books, despite the ruling last week by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza that declared gay marriage bans unconstitutional.
Piazza revised his order Thursday, saying no one in the state was harmed by the 456 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples after his order and until the Supreme Court ruled. He rejected the state’s request to put his decision on hold, saying gay couples would be harmed by that action.
“Constitutional violations are routinely recognized as triggering irreparable harm unless they are promptly remedied,” Piazza wrote. The attorney general has again turned to the state Supreme Court for help.
Seventeen other states allow gay marriage. Judges have struck down bans in Idaho, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
Ukraine tycoon sends steelworkers to join police in eastern Ukraine
KIEV, Ukraine — Steelworkers employed by Ukraine’s biggest tycoon have joined police on patrol in some disputed eastern Ukrainian cities, and the company said Thursday that its officials had struck a deal with police and pro-Russian separatists in one of the cities for the insurgents to leave occupied government buildings.
It was unclear how significant the development was. Photographs posted by police did not reveal whether the steelworkers were armed, and it was unknown whether they intended to confront the armed separatists who have declared parts of eastern Ukraine independent.
But police said the patrols in Mariupol and Makeevka had helped solve or prevent crimes, including robbery. Mariupol, a city of about 495,000 in the Donetsk region, was gripped by violence last week when clashes between police and protesters killed at least seven people.
The steelworkers are from plants belonging to Metinvest, part of the business empire of Rinat Akhmetov, believed to be Ukraine’s richest man. On Wednesday, Akhmetov issued a statement calling on Donetsk to remain part of Ukraine, arguing that independence or absorption into Russia would be economically catastrophic.
That warning did little to dampen separatist fervor in the Donetsk region, where insurgents calling themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic announced a parliament on Thursday. After a weekend referendum denounced as illegitimate by both Ukraine’s central government and the West, separatists in Donetsk and the neighboring Luhansk region declared themselves independent.
By wire sources