Corn and other feed crops from the Rocky Mountains to the Ohio River Valley continue to wither from the punishing sun and lack of rain. In turn, the nation's livestock, pork and dairy producers have begun to incur higher prices for what is often their biggest expense -- feed for their pigs and cattle. Go to story #1

The worst heat wave in a half-century is turning Missouri into a kind of Dante's Inferno, where all 114 of the state's counties and St. Louis have been declared disaster areas due to severe drought and more than three weeks with consecutive days of 90-plus degrees Fahrenheit. Go to story #2