People & Population

"FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Klee Benally, a member of the Navajo tribe, has gone to the mountains just north of here to pray, and he has gone to get arrested. He has chained himself to excavators; he has faced down bulldozers. For 10 years, the soft-spoken activist has fought a ski resort’s expansion plans in the San Francisco Peaks that include clear-cutting 74 acres of forest and piping treated sewage effluent onto a mountain to make snow."

"SAPELO ISLAND, Ga. -- Once the huge property tax bills started coming, telephones started ringing. It did not take long for the 50 or so people who live on this largely undeveloped barrier island to realize that life was about to get worse. Sapelo Island, a tangle of salt marsh and sand reachable only by boat, holds the largest community of people who identify themselves as saltwater Geechees. Sometimes called the Gullahs, they have inhabited the nation’s southeast coast for more than two centuries. Theirs is one of the most fragile cultures in America."

"Anthropologists believe early humans evolved in Africa and then moved out from there in successive waves. However, what drove their migrations has been a matter of conjecture. One new explanation is climate change."

"Cancer has become the leading cause of death among U.S. Latinos, nosing past heart disease in 2009, researchers at the American Cancer Society reported Monday."

"CUSHING, Okla. -- In energy circles, the town of Cushing is well known as the hub used by New York oil traders to set the benchmark price for all U.S. crude oil. Row after row of giant oil storage tanks are lined up around a moribund downtown and a shopping strip. At the edge of town stands a sign made of white pipes declaring: 'Pipeline Crossroads of the World.'"

"Russell E. Train, a former tax court judge whose awakening on safari sparked a new career in environmental activism, as head of the nascent Environmental Protection Agency and as the first president of the World Wildlife Fund's American chapter, died Sept. 17 at his farm in Bozman, Md. He was 92."

"NEWARK, Ohio -- Becky and Andrew Snedeker spent their first year of marriage living with her parents while searching for their dream home. They found it on James Street in Newark, but now the Ohio Department of Transportation wants to buy and raze it to clean up a known carcinogen in groundwater feet below their property."

"People of color eat a lot of locally-caught fish for economic and cultural reasons. And yet they are the least likely to be warned because state efforts fail to reach minority and low-income populations."

"A state plan to rank communities by the cumulative effects of pollution on residents has raised objections among local business leaders, who say it would kill job development in areas identified as disadvantaged."