"A federal judge in Charlotte has delivered a startling victory for industries that are part of the country’s long-running asbestos-liability fight, cutting more than $1 billion from what a company owes to current and future victims."

"Cannonball jellyfish are bland at best. In China, where slivered, dry jellyfish are commonly served before banquets and strewn across salads, cooks don't use the cellophane-like strips without first dousing them in soy sauce or sesame oil."

[Sick orange trees are] "the new norm in the Sunshine State, where about half the trees in every citrus orchard are stricken with an incurable bacterial infection from China that goes by many names: huanglongbing, “yellow dragon disease” and “citrus greening.” Growers, agriculturalists and academics liken it to cancer. Roots become deformed. Fruits drop from limbs prematurely and rot. The trees slowly die."

"Medical screenings have found high arsenic levels in at least two of the more than 50 residents tested near Louisville’s contaminated Black Leaf industrial site, the scene of Kentucky’s largest residential environmental cleanup ever."

"For the first time since records began being kept in Florida in the 1970s, the number of manatee deaths in a single year has topped 800, with two weeks remaining to the end of 2013."

"A crisis grips the Indian River Lagoon. Record numbers of manatees, dolphins and pelicans died in the past year — often from mysterious maladies. Sea grass flats are decimated. Unprecedented algae blooms have formed."

"LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A group of Louisville residents who say coal ash from a nearby power plant drifts into their lungs and homes have sued the utility company."