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Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn’t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay.This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan.Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill “resulted from a company-wide systemic failure, indicating the operator’s fundamental inability to implement pipeline safety regulations,” so the record fine is appropriate and welcome.“However, even record fines often fail to be financially meaningful to pipeline operators. The proposed fine represents less than 3% of Third Coast Midstream’s estimated annual earnings,” Caram said. “True deterrence requires penalties that make noncompliance more expensive than compliance.”The agency said Third Coast didn’t establish proper emergency procedures, which is part of why the National Transportation Safety Board found that operators failed to shut down the pipeline for nearly 13 hours after their gauges first hinted at a problem. PHMSA also said the company didn’t adequately assess the risks or properly maintain the 18-inch Main Pass Oil Gathering pipeline.The agency said the company “failed to perform new integrity analyses or evaluations following changes in circumstances that identified new and elevated risk factors” for the pipeline.That echoed what the NTSB said in its final report in June, that “Third Coast missed several opportunities to evaluate how geohazards may threaten the integrity of their pipeline. Information widely available within the industry suggested that land movement related to hurricane activity was a threat to pipelines.”The NTSB said the leak off the coast of Louisiana was the result of underwater landslides, caused by hazards such as hurricanes, that Third Coast, the pipeline owner, failed to address despite the threats being well known in the industry.A Third Coast spokesperson said the company has been working to address regulators’ concerns about the leak, so it was taken aback by some of the details the agency included in its allegations and the size of the fine.“After constructive engagement with PHMSA over the last two years, we were surprised to see aspects of the recent allegations that we believe are inaccurate and exceed established precedent. We will address these concerns with the agency moving forward,” the company spokesperson said.The amount of oil spilled in this incident was far less than the 2010 BP oil disaster, when 134 million gallons were released in the weeks following an oil rig explosion, but it could have been much smaller if workers in the Third Coast control room had acted more quickly, the NTSB said. Josh Funk, AP Transportation Writer
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E-Commerce
Workplace training invites are dropping in many employees inboxes now that the new year is underway. Most employers require staff to complete multiple HR modules annually: training on harassment, workplace relationships, or conflicts of interest, for example, followed by a quick quiz. Recently, however, a new TikTok trend imagining fake workplace training modules is going viral. Its 5 pm and you notice one of your colleagues is crying at their desk, creator @pepsimasc posted in November. Do you A: check in and ask how theyre doing, or B: tell them to shut the fuck up? the skit begins. He continues on to the next imaginary scenario: Youre in a meeting and notice one colleague bullying another. Do you A: stand up for them, B: report it to HR, C: offer them a lift home and crash the car, or D: all of the above? In the final scenario, he explains: Youre walking to the lunchroom and notice someone has smashed a glass on the floor and left it there. Do you A: contact facilities, B: clean it up immediately, or C: spill baby oil around it so someone can fall onto the glass? For those well-acquainted with this type of training, the multiple-choice framing should be painfully familiar. The videos even share that familiar elevator music that plays in the background as you click your way through the slides. (Listen long enough, and you can feel your brain slowly powering down.) Across TikTok, creators are posting their own parody HR trainings, riffing on the fact that after years of mandatory workshops and assessments, theyve got the scripts practically memorized and the tone down to a T. Another creator parodies a common phishing prompt. You get an email with a link that you think might be a scam. Whats the appropriate course of action? A: tell HR, or B: throw out your laptop. Another, in a video watched more than 8.2 million times, asks viewers to select the example of harassment. Option one: Jane gives you a high five. Option two: Marcus gives you a pat on the back. Option three: John runs at you fully erect. The comments are filled with corporate workers who feel seen by the skit. One said: And then theyre like, actually its ALL of them. This is so funny, another wrote. And unfortunately, accurate.
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E-Commerce
Its not just XRP that is having a good 2026 so far. One of the worlds oldest assets, gold, is also having a good run in the first week of the year. Heres where the precious metal stands, and why its price is rising. An ounce of gold is close to its all-time high The price of one ounce of gold reached $4,497.20 on Tuesday, according to data from Yahoo Finance. That price represents a 1% gain for the precious metal for the day so far, or an increase of $45.70 per ounce. At over $4,497, gold is now near its all-time high of $4,549.74, which it reached just weeks ago on December 26. Since the year began, gold has now risen about 2.8%. As Reuters notes, 2025 was a phenomenal year for gold. The precious metal rose 64% in the yeara gain of that magnitude has not been seen since 1979. Why is gold rising? That gold is up again near an all-time high is of little surprise given the investment history of the metal. Gold has traditionally been a safe-haven asseta resource people turn to when there is volatility or uncertainty in the markets or the world. And 2026 has kicked off with a high level of geopolitical volatility and uncertainty thanks to America’s attack on Venezuela over the weekend to forcibly extradite its president, Nicolás Maduro. The U.S government has indicted Maduro on a number of charges, including drug trafficking. The foreign intervention from the United States has left governments around the world uncertain about Americas next steps under President Trumps leadership. The forcible extradition of a sitting head of stateand apparent threats to use force against more countrieshave many wondering if America may be on the cusp of a new doctrine that prioritizes military might over international rules-based norms. Such a shift in policy would have wide geopolitical and economic ramifications, and the uncertainty about how far the Trump administration is willing to go down this new path has sent many investors seeking relatively safe-haven assets like gold, which generally fluctuates less in times of uncertainty than other assets, such as stocks. Venezuela isnt the only reason gold is up Yet Americas strike on its South American neighbor isnt the only reason gold is rising. Several economic factors are also driving people to the safe-haven asset, Reuters points out. Those factors include U.S. manufacturing activity contracting more than expected in December and the chance Americas jobless rate could increase in the near future. Both those factors can have negative consequences for the broader economy and signal a potential economic downturn. Safe-haven assets are a way for investors to hedge against such downturns. Other precious metals up, too Gold isnt the only precious metal rising. The price of platinum is currently up more than 5% today to $2,404. Silver is also up significantly, rising by more than 4.6% today as of the time of this writing. The metal had a somewhat volatile December, rising and then falling at various points throughout the month. But it’s up more than 161% over the last year. Interestingly, all this comes as traditional stock markets also continue to perform well. The S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq Composite are all in positive territory for the week so far and close to record highs.
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E-Commerce
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