"CARLSBAD, N.M. -- Just after the local water board announced this month that its farmers would get only one-tenth of their normal water allotment this year, Ronnie Walterscheid, 53, stood up and called on his elected representatives to declare a water war on their upstream neighbors."

For a while, the Naga Viper was the hottest pepper in the world. Today, breeding peppers for hotness is an area of military research.

"WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration on Tuesday announced a nationwide plan to help wildlife adapt to threats from climate change."

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in January proposed a food safety rule that lacked a requirement for food makers to actually test for germs. The requirement had been removed by a shadowy White House office known as OIRA -- where industry can lobby in secret to overturn science-based rules such as this one, meant to prevent one million illnesses per year.

"Fifty-five percent of U.S. river and stream lengths were in poor condition for aquatic life, largely under threat from runoff contaminated by fertilizers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday."

"BILLINGS, Mont. -- Federal regulators proposed $1.7 million in civil penalties against Exxon Mobil Corp. on Monday for safety violations linked to a pipeline rupture that spilled an estimated 63,000 gallons of crude oil into Montana's scenic Yellowstone River."

"Environmentalists and beekeepers are calling on the government to ban some of the country's most widely used insect-killing chemicals."

"When a Texas landowner took his fear that a gas driller had poisoned his well to federal regulators, the company, Range Resources Corp., turned around and sued him for conspiring 'to harm Range.'"

"Congress holds the purse strings, but who holds Congress these days when it comes to farm policy: the meatpackers and Monsanto?"

"WASHINGTON -- The White House has endorsed a plan to relax long-held standards for cleaning up radioactive material released by a nuclear power plant disaster or act of terrorism, a group of federal officials say in a new draft report."