"MILES, Texas -- After scanning the landscape surrounding this tiny (population 757) central Texas town, one immediately understands why the city's officials have decided to scratch the word 'cotton' from the annual September Cotton Festival.

Texas' record drought will damage entire ecosystems for years to come.

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing an effort to determine the extent of contamination at a former uranium mining site on the Navajo Nation that marked a high priority for assessment."

"As consensus mounts, and their states confront torrid heat, these politicians maintain global warming is a hoax."

Some half a million people live in Texas' colonias, impoverished communities often without flush toilets, clean drinking water, or electricity. Such commmunities exist in other border states, and their residents suffer disproportionately from a spectrum of serious diseases that arise from this environment.

"A massive dust storm has swept into the Phoenix area and drastically reduced visibility across much of the valley."

Rice farmers in Texas worry about their future in the face of looming water restrictions and drought.

"Crews have made significant progress attacking three major wildfires in Arizona, but fire danger across the Southwest will remain for weeks to come until seasonal rains arrive."

"The current drought, drier than any other October-through-May stretch in Texas history, has heightened the stakes in an already contentious long-term planning battle over water from these lakes, which feed the lower Colorado River as it runs southeast to the Gulf of Mexico. It has pitted fast-growing cities like Austin, which depend on the water for drinking and recreation, against rice farmers near the Gulf, who need vast amounts of water for irrigation."

Firefighters working dangerous night shifts were barely beginning to get a handle on some 6 wildfires in Arizona that were spreading to New Mexico, the largest of which, the Wallow fire, was barely more than 10 percent contained. Regional smoke continued to be a serious health threat. Authorities looked for a human cause to blame the fire on, even though the tinder-dry conditions had been causing the Wallow fire to spread at nearly 1,000 acres per hour. Evacuations began in New Mexico even as some Arizona evacuees were being allowed to return home.

"Flames from a mammoth forest fire licked the ridges surrounding the eastern Arizona town of Eagar on Tuesday afternoon, forcing the evacuation of about half the 4,000 residents as surrounding towns also prepared to empty."

"The Texas House gave a final OK [May 17] to the 'pork chopper' bill and sent it off to the governor's office. The bill would allow licensed hunters to hire helicopters and contract with landowners to shoot feral hogs and coyotes on their property from the sky."

"Radiation has contaminated the underground pipes, water tanks, and plumbing that provide drinking water for much of Central Texas and the famed Texas Hill Country, according to concerned city officials in the region who have tested the pipes with Geiger counters."

"A warmer Southwest might very well mean a dustier Southwest."

"In a last attempt to deep-six a controversial project to mine uranium near two Navajo communities in northwestern New Mexico, a Navajo environmental group is taking its fight to the global stage."