"Hundreds of millions of people may be trapped in inhospitable environments as they attempt to flee from the effects of global warming, worsening the likely death toll from severe changes to the climate, a UK government committee has found."

"An enormous cloud hits Lubbock, where residents compare it to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The ongoing drought helped produce the storm, an expert says."

Molly Hennessy-Fiske reports for the Los Angeles Times October 18, 2011. [20]

"Children's asthma-related emergency room visits rise in the San Joaquin Valley at a similar rate as fine particulate levels do -- even on days where air quality is considered in the moderate range.

That's a key finding of a yearlong study by the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at Fresno State, which examined the short-term impacts of air quality changes in Bakersfield, Fresno and Modesto.

"A breakthrough in oil cleanup technology allows crews to skim spilled oil off the water's surface at a much faster rate. The new device wasn't developed by Exxon, BP or any of the major oil companies — it's the work of Elastec/American Marine, based in Illinois. And the design won the company a rich prize from the X Prize Foundation.

Oil is attracted to plastic. And water is not. That, in essence, is the basis of Elastec's new skimmer.

"Baljit Chadha, the entrepreneur behind Quebec’s controversial asbestos exports, has earned a rare public rebuke from an official with the World Health Organization for distorting its position on the safety of the carcinogenic product.

'We have been receiving a lot of expressions of concerns from around the world that the WHO has been misquoted,'Ivan Ivanov, the team leader of occupational health at the WHO Department of Public Health and Environment, said in a phone interview from Geneva.

"MILWAUKEE — Just a month before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to release new rules to protect the Great Lakes from overseas ships carrying in invasive species, legislation is moving through Congress that conservation groups say might roll back those protections."