"DIRGIN, Texas -- Ida Finley smiles wistfully, recalling how she used to cook for an entire East Texas community -- nearly all descendants of slaves. The children would grab cornbread, greens and cookies from her kitchen while their parents grew vegetables in a tiny creekside village hidden among pine forests."
"Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely 'natural' disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude—a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain."
"The world's oceans are turning acidic at what's likely the fastest pace in 300 million years. Scientists tend to think this is a troubling development. But just how worried should we be, exactly?"
"Marta Cruz left Michoacán, Mexico with her husband and 1-year-old son a decade and a half ago to work in the fields of Homestead, Florida, picking lemons and tomatoes as farm workers. A couple of years ago, she began suffering from headaches but figured it was from the long hours working under the sweltering sun or the stress of figuring out how to pay bills."
"While the Harbor Point project's millions in public financing have dominated debate in Baltimore this summer, a carcinogen buried beneath the proposed waterfront development has sparked concerns about the safety of neighboring residents and the people who will work at the site in Fells Point."
"BOSTON -- The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) and the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) have closed 40 oyster beds in Plymouth Harbor, Kingston Bay, Duxbury Bay, Bluefish River and Back River in the towns of Plymouth, Kingston, Duxbury and Marshfield."
"Scientists used to be well represented among the nearly half of Americans who voted Republican. But that's changed over the years, and one poll found that just 6 percent of scientists call themselves part of the GOP now."
"Desiccated corn and sun-scorched soybeans have been in high supply lately -- and we're paying through the nose for them. The federal government forked out a record-breaking $17.3 billion last year to compensate farmers for weather-related crop losses—more than four times the annual average over the last decade."
"Crop-damaging pests are moving towards the poles at a rate of more than 25 km (16 miles) a decade, aided by global warming and human transport, posing a potential threat to world food security, a study showed on Sunday."
"TOKYO -- A crisis over contaminated water at Japan's stricken nuclear plant worsened on Saturday when the plant's operator said it had detected high radiation levels near storage tanks, a finding that raised the possibility of additional leaks."
