"The Asian stink bug has started its migration into North Carolina, and a team of researchers at N.C. State University have prepped their labs, set their traps and launched a monitoring website - all in an effort to stop the pest's spread. Their work is urgent. This insect, also known as the brown marmorated stink bug, has decimated crops in the mid-Atlantic states."

The U.S. and Australia have been the breadbasket that fed famine-stricken areas of Africa and Asia in recent decades. Global climate change may be weakening that foundation of world food security.

"CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- People with C8 in their blood face a greater risk of having chronic kidney diseases, according to the latest in a series of West Virginia University studies on the toxic chemical."

"The cost of America's quiet billion dollar disaster in the Upper Midwest keeps rising as floodwaters decline."

"Protesters hope to persuade President Obama not to approve the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline that would run from Canada to Texas. But the State Department already says its safe, and supporters point to thousands of new jobs."

"The editor of the journal Remote Sensing resigned [Friday], saying in an editorial that his journal never should have published a controversial paper in July that challenged the reliability of climate models used to forecast global warming. The paper, by Roy Spencer and William Braswell of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, proposed that climate researchers have likely made a fundamental error by overestimating the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse-gas pollution."

"Lee has been downgraded to a tropical depression. All coastal tropical storm warnings have been discontinued. At 10 p.m., the center of tropical depression Lee was located near latitude 31.0 north, longitude 91.4 west, about 55 miles west-southwest of McComb, Miss."

Follow Tropical Depression Lee on the New Orleans Times-Picayune Hurricance Page. [27]

[28]

"BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- A week after Tropical Storm Irene washed out scores of roads across southern and central Vermont, state officials on Saturday worked to restore more routes and worried about forecasts for more heavy rain."

"President Barack Obama put a stop on Friday to new rules that would limit smog pollution, unexpectedly reversing course on a key policy measure after businesses said it would kill jobs and cost them billions of dollars."