"A dangerous chemical used in dry cleaning is being phased out in California, but state regulators say we may still have to live with a toxic legacy for years to come."

"An advance guard of 18-wheelers is scheduled to roll into a business park in Cheyenne, Wyo., this week to unload components of a supercomputer called Yellowstone. This 1.5-quadrillion-calculations-per-second crystal ball will model future climate and forecast extreme weather."

"Tropical Storm Beryl cut a soggy path across the U.S. southeast on Monday after swirling ashore in Florida at near hurricane strength."

"Job growth in the nation's coal fields has taken a hit amid tough market conditions for U.S. coal and competition from natural gas, according to a review of federal employment statistics."

"The Bureau of Land Management is advancing what could become the world's largest solar power project in a region of the Southern California desert where environmental groups and American Indian tribes have filed multiple federal lawsuits to stop already approved, large-scale renewables projects."

Fecal contamination of coastal waters causes many cases of gastrointestinal and respiratory illness. While environmental agencies do monitor water contamination, they do not look at beach sand, which can also harbor disease-causing germs.

"Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff on Friday vetoed divisive elements of a new law that relaxes the forest cover farmers must preserve on their land, taking a stand against the agricultural lobby that pushed a more lenient version through Congress."

"The latest round of international climate change talks finished on Friday in discord and disappoint

President Obama's preoccupation with Shell's proposal to drill for oil in the offshore Arctic -- even after the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- appears to signal that it will be inevitable, barring a major legal challenge.

The incidence of autism seems to be increasing, and genetics does not account for all the cases. Researchers are asking whether environmental factors like toxic chemicals are partly to blame, but definitive answers have not yet been found.