Inspections

If the horrific garment factory collapse last month in Bangladesh has any silver lining, it is the response from more than 30 of the world's leading apparel companies - including Benetton, PVH, Abercrombie & Fitch, H&M, Inditex (Zara), Marks & Spencer and Tesco - to sign an agreement to protect the safety and lives of that nation's workers, who make the companies' products. The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh is a historic advance over the voluntary private factory monitoring that has tragically failed to prevent the recent disasters in Bangladesh and in places around the world where clothes are stitched for the global market.

The Russian Justice Ministry accused an election watchdog of failing to register as a “foreign agent” on Tuesday, alleging the group still receives funding from abroad. Golos, a nongovernmental organization that monitors Russian elections, is the first group to face charges under a new law that requires Russian groups that get foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” or risk fines, restrictions on public protest and imprisonment. In a statement on its website , the Justice Ministry said Tuesday that it had filed charges against Golos, alleging that the group must register because it is involved in Russian politics and receives foreign funds.

Nearly a third of older-model cars stopped for roadside smog tests in Southern California failed them, despite having received a passing grade at inspection stations within a year, a state audit has found. The results of those surprise inspections of 6,000 models manufactured before 1996 have led law enforcement officials to crack down on unscrupulous stations, step up fines and file more criminal charges. Legislation introduced in the California Assembly this week would allow the state to bar low-performing test stations from conducting smog checks.

Getting information on volcanic plumes can be perilous work. The unbearable heat. The noxious gas. The jagged terrain. So NASA found a new way to carry out the mission without putting its researchers in danger: drones. PHOTOS: America's drone fleet Last month, a team of NASA researchers   sent three re-purposed military drones with special instruments into a sulfur dioxide plume emitted by  Costa Rica's 10,500-foot Turrialba volcano. The team, led by principal investigator David Pieri of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Caña da - Flintridge,  launched 10 flights involving the small, unmanned spy planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration has recommended inspections for the airlines that use seats made by the same Texas manufacturer of seats that came loose last month from several American Airline planes. Reports of loose seats on about half a dozen American Airlines flights forced the Fort Worth-based carrier last month to temporarily ground almost 50 Boeing 757 planes to ensure the seats were securely fastened to the cabin floor. Quiz: Test your knowledge of business news After initially blaming the problem on a faulty seat clamp, the airline later said that the buildup of spilled soft drinks, coffee and juice kept locking pins from staying in place and securing the seats.

Russian officials pressed ahead Wednesday with a sweeping wave of inspections on nonprofit foundations, human rights groups and other NGOs that has troubled activists in Russia and abroad. In the latest round, state inspectors showed up at the offices of Human Rights Watch and Transparency International. Four government officials -- two from the Moscow prosecutor's office, one from the Ministry of Justice and one involved in tax inspection -- arrived at Transparency International with a letter seeking office policies, financial documents and other papers, director Elena Panfilova said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON -- The EPA says it does not fly drones over the heartland to spy on farmers. It does, however, use manned aircraft to enforce anti-pollution laws. And that's a practice that a group of farm-state lawmakers want to stop. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) has introduced the Farmer's Privacy Act to sharply restrict the Environmental Protection Agency's  use of "aerial surveillance" of farms and ranches -- the latest shot at an agency that congressional Republicans consider a symbol of Washington's regulatory overreach.

WASHINGTON -- State regulators inspect oil and gas wells sporadically, do not consistently record violations, and impose light penalties on companies that are found to break environmental, health or safety rules, according to a new research report issued by the environmental watchdog group Earthworks. The report, “Breaking All the Rules,” comes out at a time when hydraulic fracturing -- known as "fracking" -- and horizontal drilling have touched off a nationwide boom in oil and gas production.

Federal inspectors failed to conduct nearly a third of required inspections on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the 28 months before it exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, according to government records. The inspections that were carried out by the Minerals Management Service found no sign of trouble on BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to documents posted Friday on the Interior Department's website. MMS reports, including one dated three weeks before the deadly April 20 explosion, indicate that the rig's blowout preventer was functioning properly, and they make no mention of any persistent problems with surges of natural gas, or "kicks," flowing up through the well and disrupting drilling.

Four passengers are suing Southwest Airlines in federal court over flights by dozens of planes that missed inspections during a period of about six years. The lawsuit filed in Birmingham, Ala., seeks class-action status. Its claims include breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and negligent and reckless operation of an aircraft. The suit filed Friday contends the class probably covers more than 10,000 people. The Dallas-based carrier temporarily grounded scores of its older Boeing 737 jetliners last month to carry out the inspections.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has launched an investigation into the Doheny Glatt Kosher meat market as controversy brews over the integrity of products sold there. The owner of Doheny, Michael Engelman, faces accusations of selling meat that was not properly certified under kosher rules. Last week, a council of rabbis pulled Doheny's kosher certification and, in a statement Friday, raised the possibility of "legal action. " Tuesday, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service confirmed that the Doheny market is under investigation, adding yet another item to its mounting pile of problems.

Southern California Edison, majority owner of the closed San Onofre nuclear plant, submitted to federal regulators a draft request for a license amendment that would allow the plant to be fired up again before summer. The plant's fate has been a subject of contention since it closed more than a year ago due to excessive wear on steam generator tubes that carry radioactive water. Edison has proposed to restart one of the plant's two units, the one in which the damage was less severe, and run it at 70% power for five months before taking it offline again for inspections.

Russian officials pressed ahead Wednesday with a sweeping wave of inspections on nonprofit foundations, human rights groups and other NGOs that has troubled activists in Russia and abroad. In the latest round, state inspectors showed up at the offices of Human Rights Watch and Transparency International. Four government officials -- two from the Moscow prosecutor's office, one from the Ministry of Justice and one involved in tax inspection -- arrived at Transparency International with a letter seeking office policies, financial documents and other papers, director Elena Panfilova said Wednesday.

There is no market these days for horse meat in this country. The last horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. stopped production in 2007, the result of laws in Illinois and Texas banning horse slaughter or the sale of horse meat for human consumption. That same year, a congressional appropriations bill that included a rider banning the funding of U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection of horse meat went into effect. And without inspections, U.S. plants can't sell meat anywhere in the world.

A phone company whose equipment on a top-heavy pole was partly to blame for the 2007 Malibu Canyon fire has agreed to pay $14.5 million under a proposed settlement, according to legal documents. NextG Networks of California Inc., now owned by Crown Castle NG West Inc., will pay $8.5 million into California's general fund and $6 million to hire independent engineers to inspect each of the company's attachments on tens of thousands of poles in California. Any pole found to be overloaded or decayed would be replaced, with co-owners sharing the cost.

For many years, when managers grew frustrated about lax enforcement at Los Angeles farmers markets, they would cry, "If only Ed Williams were here!" Williams, who worked for the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner's office from 1987 to 1990, "could walk through a market and spot the cheaters in an instant," said Laura Avery, supervisor of the Santa Monica farmers markets. He did such a great job that he got a promotion to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA)

In response "Westlake Fire: Did It Have to Be So Bad?" editorial, May 6: The Los Angeles Fire Department is superb at fighting fires. It fails at inspections and follow-through. Inspections are incidental jobs. The L.A. Department of Building and Safety is organized to do inspections and assure timely corrective action. From my vantage point the obvious solution is transfer inspections to those who do it best. Building and Safety has the inspectors available and gets my nod. Smoke detectors, as required by the city, have significant false alarm rates.

A state probe into the widespread power outages caused by a furious 2011 windstorm was unable to determine whether toppled utility poles met safety standards because Southern California Edison destroyed most of them before they could be inspected. The winds that roared through the San Gabriel Valley knocked down hundreds of utility poles, snapped cables and uprooted scores of trees, leaving nearly a quarter of a million Edison customers without power, some for a full week. In a report released Monday, the California Public Utilities Commission found that at least 21 poles were unstable because of termite destruction, dry rot or other damage before tumbling over in wind gusts of up to 120 mph on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, 2011.

SACRAMENTO - State regulators are responding to a deadly nationwide meningitis outbreak linked to contaminated drugs by seeking new power to inspect out-of-state pharmacies that sell special-order prescription drugs in California. In September, the New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass., sent three shipments of contaminated injectable steroid solutions to 76 healthcare facilities and pain-control clinics in 23 states, including four in California. These customized drugs, which were injected into patients' spines and joints, caused 39 deaths among 620 reported cases of fungal meningitis and other infections, according to a Dec. 17 report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.