"Every 10 days, Thad Smith enters a piece of land that is otherwise forbidden to most people: The empty acreage around Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It’s there that Smith and his crew from the Westside Bee Boyz tend to 75 beehives. Last year, he and his fellow beekeepers harvested 1,600 pounds of honey in the otherwise unoccupied land beneath O’Hare’s airspace."
"Back in 2008, an estimated 1.1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash was released into the Emory River in Tennessee when a dam breached at the Kingston Fossil Plant. It was the biggest coal ash spill in the nation. Much of that coal ash was hauled to a landfill in Perry County, Alabama. Residents of the poor, mostly African-American county have filed a lawsuit saying they're suffering as a result of the coal ash. But the landfill is also a vital part of the local economy.
"A U.S. Geological Survey researcher says she's worried about the Navajo because drought, combined with increasing temperatures, are making it harder for them to live in the harsh conditions. The Navajo Nation is being buried in sand."
"The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) confirmed reports Thursday of a widespread die-off in critically endangered saiga antelope throughout central Kazakhstan, reporting that more than 120,000 of the animals have died since mid-May."
"As the sun set over western Pennsylvania, Marcus Santos, inmate #JL7126, sat alone in a drab prison hospital, his eyes closed, wondering if he was about to die. It was Aug. 26, 2012."
The problem of growing bacterial resistance to antibiotics is being compounded by the decisions of many drug companies to stop developing and making new antibiotics. The reason: they are not making money.
"ALONG THE SALTON SEA, CALIF. — The bone-dry lake bed burned crystalline and white in the midday sun. Ecologist Bruce Wilcox hopped out of his truck and bent down to scoop up a handful of the gleaming, crusty soil."
In a letter to pipeline safety regulators, two California Senators called "insufficient" the response of pipeline operators to a large spill near Santa Barbara.
"An oil industry lobby group successfully recruited a Canadian cabinet minister to deliver a pep talk and dispense strategic planning advice at a closed door meeting in a luxury Rocky Mountains resort, the Guardian has learned."
"The Obama administration, aiming to keep a finicky, chickenlike bird called the greater sage grouse off the endangered species list, moved on Thursday to limit petroleum drilling and other activities on some of its wide-ranging habitat in the American West."
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