"In a mile-high duel, driven firefighters are determined to keep flames from the historic facility."

"President Barack Obama is creating a new federal interagency task force to coordinate the "economic and environmental resiliency" of Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast region."

"LOS CABOS, Mexico – Emergency workers struggled to evacuate thousands of reluctant slum dwellers as extremely dangerous Hurricane Jimena approached Mexico's resort-studded Baja California Peninsula on Tuesday."

"The Station blaze [near L.A.] has destroyed more than 50 buildings and burned more than 105,000 acres of mountainous brush. Little hope of containment is seen as long as hot, dry conditions continue."

"The giant fire in Angeles National Forest continued its slow-motion rampage through the mountains Sunday, causing the deaths of two firefighters as it bore down on the semirural community of Acton and threatened to overrun Mt. Wilson."

"Fire crews were battling to save hundreds of homes that were threatened by two wildfires burning in dry, explosive brush near La Cañada Flintridge and on the Palos Verdes Peninsula."

"The first hurricane of the Atlantic season loomed far out in the ocean Tuesday, gaining power and moving on a track that forecasters said could take it close to Bermuda by the end of the week."

Firefighters have largely contained many of the major fires that forced thousands of residents in various parts of California to flee their homes. Some are already returning.

"A mudslide triggered by torrential rains from a typhoon may have buried up to 600 villagers in mountainous southern Taiwan, disaster officials said on Monday."

"Government officials have been slow to upgrade security at U.S. laboratories that handle deadly germs nearly a year after congressional investigators found weak security controls, a new audit finds."

"Union Carbide is defending its former chief executive now wanted for arrest in India, saying that managers at the company’s plant in Bhopal could not have anticipated a gas leak that killed 10,000 people 25 years ago."

"More than two million people living on the banks of Lake Kivu in central Africa are at risk of being asphyxiated by gases building up beneath its surface, scientists have warned."

The nation's program to detect nuclear devices and materials being smugggled into the country by terrorists went "off the rails" during the Bush administration and left the nation unprotected.

"The Department of Homeland Security relied on a rushed, flawed study to justify its decision to locate a $700 million research facility for highly infectious pathogens in a tornado-prone section of Kansas, according to a government report."

"Scientists have underestimated the potential for a giant quake and tsunami that could swamp much the U.S. northwest and Canadian west coasts, British and U.S. researchers said on Monday."