"After three fiery accidents involving trains carrying crude oil out of North Dakota's Bakken Shale, regulators and industry officials are trying to figure out why the oil is exploding."
"Veteran marijuana farmers say newcomers to Northern California’s pot hotbed use toxic, harmful methods to cash in."
"Millions of American property owners get flood insurance from the federal government, and a lot of them get a hefty discount. But over the past decade, the government has paid out huge amounts of money after floods, and the flood insurance program is deeply in the red."
"Rain is so important in Malawi's agriculture-based economy that there are names for different kinds of it, from the brief bursts of early fall to heavier downpours called mvula yodzalira, literally "planting rain." For generations, rainfall patterns here in the southeast part of Africa have been predictable, reliable. But not now."
"Environmental activists warn that construction of a 21-mile natural gas pipeline through northern Baltimore and Harford counties could affect the region's drinking-water system, as the $180 million project cuts across more than three dozen streams feeding into Loch Raven Reservoir."
"Post-tsunami reconstruction and radiation cleanup could take 10 years, but officials say something has been permanently lost."
"ITUMBIARA, Brazil — This should be a golden era here on Brazil’s farming frontier, where some of the world’s biggest corporations have invested billions of dollars in land, equipment and mills to turn sugar cane into ethanol."
"An unprecedented wintertime outbreak of West Nile virus has killed more than two dozen bald eagles in Utah and thousands of water birds around the Great Salt Lake, state wildlife officials said on Tuesday."
"A controversial hunting contest in Idaho targeting wolves and coyotes has ended with nearly two dozen coyotes killed but no wolves shot, though rancor over the event remains undiminished."
"January 1 is the end of the era of your standard, soft white Edison-designed incandescent bulb in the United States. Or at least, in theory."
