"PAULSBORO, N.J. -- A freight train derailed Friday on a railroad bridge that has had problems before, toppling tanker cars partially into a creek and causing a leak of hazardous gas that was blamed for sickening dozens of people, authorities said."

Cornfields -- which occupy a big fraction of U.S. farmland -- differ from normal ecosystems in that they are nearly sterile ecologically. Breeding and spraying aim to prevent anything from living but corn.

"We'll start in a cornfield — we'll call it an Iowa cornfield in late summer — on a beautiful day. The corn is high. The air is shimmering. There's just one thing missing — and it's a big thing...

...a very big thing, but I won't tell you what, not yet.

Concerns about toxic flame retardants in furniture have led to changes, but they have yet to make most furniture much safer.

"Flame retardants in U.S. furniture are on the rise, with a new study finding them in nearly all couches tested."

"For drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, the 17-page article in the New England Journal of Medicine represented a coup. The 2006 report described a trial that compared three diabetes drugs and concluded that Avandia, the company’s new drug, performed best. ... What only careful readers of the article would have gleaned is the extent of the financial connections between the drugmaker and the research."

"New citations against Chemical Waste Management prompt Kettleman City activists, who believe the dump has sickened children, to protest its proposal to grow."

"HINKLEY -- Underwater home mortgages plague the High Desert at an approximate rate of 60 percent, according to real estate website Zillow.com. But in Hinkley, residents say the entire town is dealing with mortgages above their current assessed values."

"BEIJING -- Some of the world’s best known fashion retailers are selling clothing contaminated with hazardous chemicals that break down to form hormone-disrupting or cancer-causing chemicals when released into the environment, finds a report issued [Tuesday] by Greenpeace International in Beijing."

"ST. LOUIS -- A doctoral dissertation that renewed public interest in the military-sponsored chemical spraying of impoverished areas of St. Louis in the 1950s and ’60s has spawned a lawsuit."

"Pennsylvania's environmental protection chief is defending his agency's controversial system for testing water wells near Marcellus Shale operations by saying other states work the same way. But regulators in those states say that's not true."