"COLQUITT, Ga. — The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement."

"The House adjourned at 9:24 p.m. [Monday] after debating several more amendments to the 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, and is expected to hold votes on these on Tuesday in the process of wrapping up the bill." The Tuesday votes are likely to illuminate the stark differences between Republicans and Democrats on energy and environmental policies, but House-passed riders may have dim hopes in the Senate.

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking an inventory of more than 30,000 coastal shipwrecks — some of them casualties of the 1942 Battle of the Atlantic — and identifying those that pose the most significant threat."

Lake Ontario, the farthest downsream of the Great Lakes, suffers from water quality problems.

"The La Nina weather anomaly blamed for one of the worst droughts in the southern United States could revive this autumn, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center forecast on Thursday."

"Bayer CropScience has agreed to pay $750 million to settle claims by U.S. rice farmers that the company's genetically modified rice has contaminated their crops."

The DuPont company, which has touted its own safety and environmental record, turned down in 1988 a construction option for its Belle, WV, plant that could have protected workers and the community from deadly phosgene gas. One worker died in a series of three phosgene releases there in 2010.

"DuPont Co. rejected affordable plant and equipment upgrades, ignored near-miss incidents and violated the chemical giant's own widely touted safety guidelines in failing to prevent three January 2010 accidents that left one Belle plant worker dead, federal investigators said in a report issued Thursday."

"Green groups are cheering a proposed rule released by U.S. EPA this week that they hope will close a dangerous hazardous waste recycling loophole created in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration."

"Marauding insects have become a leading threat to the nation’s forests over the past decade, a problem made worse by drought and a warming climate, a federal report says."