"HOUSTON — With oil prices collapsing and companies in retrenchment, a federal auction in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday attracted the lowest interest from producers since 1986."
"Ten years ago next week, a terrifying hurricane stood perched atop the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina. It had rapidly intensified from a Category 3 into a deadly Category 5 monster and began its northward turn towards the Gulf coast—weakening, fortunately, but still driving a tremendous wall of water."
As the 10th anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe approaches, many news media are doing stories that try to make sense of it. For journalists, it's an inexhaustible subject because it's about people's lives and the moral perils of the governments we choose. It's about the looming catastrophes we deny.
"Male black bass and some sunfish in North Carolina rivers and streams are developing eggs in their testes, which can cause reproductive problems and potentially threaten populations, according to unpublished research."
"The task of removing lead-contaminated soil from thousands of homes near a closed Vernon battery recycling plant would be the largest cleanup of its kind in California and rank among the biggest conducted nationwide, say environmental officials and experts in toxic remediation."
"According to preliminary data from NASA along with information from the Japan Meteorological Administration, July 2015 was the warmest month on record since instrument temperature records began in the late 1800s."
"A former chemical company executive charged over a spill that fouled the drinking water of about 300,000 West Virginians pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors on Tuesday, according to federal court documents."
"The lobster population has crashed to the lowest levels on record in southern New England while climbing to heights never before seen in the cold waters off Maine and other northern reaches — a geographic shift that scientists attribute in large part to the warming of the ocean."
"Tropical storm Danny continues to spin about halfway between Africa and the Lesser Antilles in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. This is the first named storm in the Atlantic since the final advisory was written for Claudette on July 14, a time span of more than a month."
