"Just as wild plants and animals have their environmental champions, so foodies are seeking to preserve the biodiversity of cultivated species and rescue rare delicacies such as California's Sebastopol Gravenstein apple. The big difference? With endangered foods, you save them by eating them."

"Hundreds of century-old trees lay snapped in half and uprooted throughout Central Park on Wednesday after a severe thunderstorm with winds as high as 80 mph barreled through the city overnight."

"Seattle voters have turned down Referendum 1, which aimed to reduce throwaway bag use in Seattle by charging shoppers 20 cents for each disposable plastic or paper shopping bag provided by stores."

"The Army on Wednesday won a court challenge to its plan to incinerate chemical weapons at storage sites around the country over objections from a watchdog group that says the practice releases toxic pollution."

"Mexico is suffering from its driest year in 68 years, killing crops and cattle in the countryside and forcing the government to slow the flow of water to the crowded capital."

"No fish can escape mercury pollution. That's the take-home message from a federal study of mercury contamination released Wednesday that tested fish from nearly 300 streams across the country."

Canada faces a monumental challenge in finding a way to store or dispose of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. The problem has dragged on unsolved for decades, and any solution is likely to prove costly.

"A new study has found that downloading music is substantially better from an emissions perspective than buying compact discs."

"Kenya's lion population could disappear altogether in the next 20 years because of climate change, habitat destruction, disease and conflict with humans, the country's wildlife authority said on Monday."

"Very low doses of some types of the herbicide Roundup can disrupt human liver cell function; the formulations' toxicity may be tied to their 'inactive' ingredients rather than the active weed-killing ingredient glyphosate."