"In California, May typically marks the beginning of a warm and dry summer season. This year, however, things are different. Not only has it been warm and dry for the past couple weeks; it's been warm and dry for months. So dry, in fact, that officials are warning the risk of wildfires across much of the state is going to be much worse than usual, for several months to come."

"On her 14th birthday, Kayla Boner got her driver's permit and then went home complaining of stomach-bug symptoms that landed her in the hospital two days later. Antibiotics didn't work. Kayla's condition deteriorated. Her kidneys failed. She had a seizure and went on a ventilator. Soon after, her brain activity ceased. Just 11 days after her symptoms surfaced, Kayla's distraught parents decided not to keep her on life support."

"Dispatched to a one-story brick warehouse in flames on Baylis Street in [the] Canton [neighborhood of Baltimore, Md.] last month, firefighters did not know it contained 8,000 gallons of corrosive chemicals. But not because it wasn't known to the Baltimore City Fire Department."

"It's been two years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil on the Gulf of Mexico. In the midst of the disaster, BP and its contractors did everything they could to keep people from seeing the scale of the disaster. But new photos released Monday offer some new insight to just how grim the Gulf became for sea life."

"Soccer balls, motorcycles and a million other reminders of the massive tsunami in Japan a year ago are appearing along Alaska's coastlines."

"A trial to assign blame and damages that could total tens of billions of dollars for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been put off until January, in a setback for the U.S. government, which wanted to try its case this summer."

"Japan shuts down its last working nuclear power reactor this weekend just over a year after a tsunami scarred the nation and if it survives the summer without major electricity shortages, producers fear the plants will stay offline for good."

"The results, showing an engineered flu strain can spread easily between ferrets, derive from a controversial study that stirred debate over fears of a bioterrorism threat."

"Earth-observing systems operated by the United States have entered a steep decline, imperiling the nation’s monitoring of weather, natural disasters and climate change, a report from the National Research Council warned on Wednesday."

"Despite investigations by four special committees, key questions remain about the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."