"Retail food prices are predicted to rise as soon as this fall due to the high temperatures, low rainfall and 70-year record drought across the Midwest that have boosted commodity prices for corn, soybeans and other field crops, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today."
"Welcome rains provided some relief to heat-stressed cities and worried farmers in the U.S. Midwest on Tuesday, but reports of failed crops, wildfires and other fallout from the worst U.S. drought in more than 50 years tempered any optimism."
"WHITEHORSE, Yukon Territory — In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the Army Corps of Engineers an assignment: Build a road from British Columbia across the Yukon to Alaska — in eight months, before winter sets in."
"Perhaps the most unsung patch of heaven in New York City is a tiny sliver of riverfront parkland tucked between a metal-recycling yard and a giant wholesale produce market, on the far side of a six-lane highway and a pair of active freight train tracks. Hunts Point Riverside Park, a 1.4-acre speck in the South Bronx, opened a few years ago on what had been a filthy, weedy street end."
"The most expansive drought in more than a half century intensified this week and stretched further into major farm areas of the western Midwest where crops had largely been shielded from the harsh conditions that decimated yields further east."
"More than half of the continental United States is currently suffering through the worst drought in 50 years, with heat and a lack of rain rippling through the middle of the country. Crops are wilting, soils are cracked, and some dried-out forests are catching fire. U.S. corn production in particular is dwindling. So is this a glimpse at our hotter, drier future? It appears so."
"More than 50 percent of the United States is under drought conditions right now, putting 2012 in the same category with some of the worst droughts in the nation's history."
"Some of the weather extremes bedeviling people around the world have become far more likely because of human-induced global warming, researchers reported on Tuesday. Yet they ruled it out as a cause of last year’s devastating floods in Thailand, one of the most striking weather events of recent years."
"KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An unrelenting and record-setting heat wave peaked this weekend, beating a broad swath of states into sweaty submission, with above-normal triple-digit temperatures stretching from St. Louis to Washington."
"WASHINGTON -- When it comes to energy issues, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Josh Mandel agree on two things -- and maybe only two things: First, energy issues and economic issues are inextricably linked. And second, they will probably play an outsized role in Ohio's U.S. Senate race."
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