"A highly contagious fungus that destroys tomato plants has quickly spread to nearly every state in the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic, and the weather over the next week may determine whether the outbreak abates or whether tomato crops are ruined."

An abandoned river -- the Trinity -- runs through Dallas. Storms wash old industrial poisons into it via ditches. As poisons accumulated in its sediments, fish became dangerous to eat. "So people stayed away, and over time, it no longer mattered which came first -- the toxic fish or the abandoned river."

The mysterious, miles-long "blob" found floating in the Chukchi Sea is not an oil spill or alien life-form, according to early tests, but an unusual algal bloom.

Winds are whipping up wildfires in a British Columbia community where housing subdivisions have encroached on surrounding forests in recent years. Thousands of people are being evacuated from their homes.