Environment

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An unchecked boat crosses the San Miguel River to Colombia. Residents of river towns in Ecuador are complaining about the Colombian guerrilla fighters who come to seek supplies, prostitutes and a respite from the fighting across the river. (Kelly Hearn)

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A sick Pakistani's bed sits outside Tuesday for lack of room at a rural health center in a flood-affected district of Punjab province. Hundreds of health facilities have been damaged by flooding. (Associated Press)

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Pakistani flood victims line up for food in a camp set up for displaced people in Nowshera, Pakistan, on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010. Recovering from the devastating floods still battering Pakistan will take at least three years, President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday, as the waters swept south after leaving millions homeless and submerging millions of acres of farmland. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad)

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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, right, puts his arm around former Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, left, as they conclude a press conference at the Agriculture Department in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010. Mrs. Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official ousted during a racial firestorm last month, declined Tuesday to return to the agency, though she said it was tempting. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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In this photo taken on Monday, Aug. 23, 2010, truck drivers play cards in the shade of a truck jammed on an entrance ramp to the Beijing-Tibet Highway in Guoleizhuang township, in north China's Hebei province. The massive traffic jam that stretches for dozens of miles and hit its 10-day mark on Tuesday stems from road construction in Beijing that won't be finished until the middle of next month, an official said. (AP Photo)

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A cleaner picks up waste on the roadside of a jammed section of the Beijing-Zhangjiakou highway in Huailai, in north China's Hebei province, Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010. The massive traffic jam that stretches for dozens of miles and hit its 10-day mark on Tuesday stems from road construction in Beijing that won't be finished until the middle of next month, an official said. (AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan)

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A billboard advertising emergency room wait times is seen along Interstate 64 near downtown Richmond, Va., Friday, Aug. 20, 2010. ER visits hit a new high of more than 123 million in 2008, up from 117 million a year earlier, says preliminary data released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Online, via text message or flashing on a billboard, some emergency rooms are advertising how long the dreaded wait for care will be, with estimates updated every few minutes. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

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An American Chemical Society report found home-brewed green or black tea contains more polyphenols, chemicals linked to fighting cancer, than bottled teas. (Los Angeles TImes)

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Biologist Emiliana Isasi-Catala and Guatopo National Park ranger Arturo Gonzalez check a camera trap. Ms. Isasi-Catala has captured videos and photographs of jaguars by using a collection of cameras with motion sensors set up in the Guatopo National Park forest. (Associated Press)

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Neil Cramond, BP's Gulf of Mexico marine authority, testifies Monday during hearings into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the resulting oil spill in the Gulf. (AP Photo/Melissa Phillip, Pool)

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ASSOCIATED PRESS "We continue to see development ... in their ability to conduct operations," Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said of the Iraqi army.

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Trainloads of coal are sent to the Basin Electric Power Cooperative's Dry Fork Station power plant being built near Gillette, Wyo. The largest expansion of traditional coal plants in two decades represents an acknowledgment that highly touted "clean coal" technology is still a long way from becoming a reality. (Associated Press)

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Marty Snell of Black Hills Power monitors track operations of the Wygen III power plant in Wyodak, Wyo. Black Hills has spent $80 million on pollution controls for Wygen, but other coal plant efforts to curb greenhouse gases have lagged. (Associated Press)

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Relatives of miners trapped in a collapsed mine react Sunday after being informed that one of the drill machines being used in the rescue effort has reached the depth where the miners are thought to be located after 17 days in Copiapo, Chile. At least 33 miners have been trapped below the surface of the mine since the main access collapsed on Aug. 5 due to tons of falling rock. (Associated Press)

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** FILE ** Haitian-born singer and presidential candidate Wyclef Jean (second from left) walks surrounded by security after Haiti's Electoral Council rejected his candidacy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Friday, Aug. 20, 2010. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

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Roads along the Yalu River are inundated by floodwaters in Dandong in northeast China's Liaoning province on Saturday, Aug. 21, 2010. The Yalu, which marks China's border with North Korea, breached a dike Saturday after torrential rains, forcing the evacuation of more than 94,000 people. (AP Photos/Xinhua News Agency, Zhao Guiliang)

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FILE - This Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008 image provided by NASA shows astronaut Alan Poindexter exercising on a bicycle ergometer on the space shuttle Atlantis while docked with the International Space Station. Astronauts can become as weak as 80-year-olds after six months at the International Space Station, according to a new study that raises serious health concerns as NASA contemplates prolonged trips to asteroids and Mars. (AP Photo/NASA)

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Agronomist at the Pavlovsk Agricultural Station Sergei Gandrabur walks at the station in Pavlovsk, near St.Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010. The world's first seed bank survived World War II thanks to 12 Russian scientists who chose to starve to death rather than eat the grain they were saving for future generations. Now the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry's seed bank is in danger again, this time because of court-approved plans to rip up its vast fields of genetically diverse plants and build fancy homes on the prime real estate they occupy near St. Petersburg.(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

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FILE - In a Monday, Aug. 16, 2010 photo, shrimpers haul in their catch in Bastian Bay, near Empire, La., on the first day of shrimping season since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Scientists released a report Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010 that says an invisible plume of oil lies more than a half mile beneath the sea's surface off the coast of Louisiana, within 20 miles of the BP well. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

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A June 2010 photo provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows Chief Scientist Rich Camilli, left, a WHOI environmental engineer, and co-principal investigator Chris Reddy, a WHOI marine chemist and oil spill expert, aboard the research vessel Endeavor in the Gulf of Mexico. Camilli is the chief author of a study released Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010 in which scientists report the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill. (AP Photo/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Cameron McIntyre)