Six years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the entity known as al-Qaeda remains largely a mystery: its intent, its ideology, its leadership, and its inner workings are all largely unknown to the American people. Experts study them and interpret the arcane meanings of their utterances in light of Koranic verses. The president of the United States and his allies aver that they hate us because we’re so free, so prosperous, so utterly fabulous – yet still al-Qaeda is, at least in the popular mind, an army of shadows, in the sense that they don’t seem quite real.

Thousands of species in danger of extinction in the wild may survive only in captivity. The annual ‘Red List’ of extinct and endangered species to be published on Wednesday by the World Conservation Union is expected to show another increase in the numbers under threat of being wiped out by habitat loss, hunting, alien predators and climate change.

Last year the union warned that the world faced ‘the sixth great extinction of life on earth’ as mammals, amphibians, birds, insects, fish and plants were being lost at ‘unprecedented rates’. One in four mammals and one in eight bird species have been labelled ‘threatened’.

As global warming continues to shrink the Arctic ice, nearly two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will die by 2050, the U.S. Geological Survey said Friday.

And if global warming continues for next few years, the polar bear could soon be listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. A final decision on the bear’s designation is due in January.

The largest protest so far during US President George W. Bush’s visit to Sydney ended peacefully Wednesday, but police predicted a “full-scale riot” later in the week.

About 300 students, many still in their high school uniforms, marched through central Sydney chanting anti-war slogans in protest at the US leader’s presence in Australia for this week’s Asia-Pacific summit.

The Bush administration opposed in U.S. court on Friday an effort to peel back a secrecy lid over its domestic counterterrorism wiretapping program, which critics say infringes on privacy and rights.

“The public disclosure of the documents the ACLU requests would seriously compromise sensitive sources and methods relating to the collection of intelligence necessary for the Government to conduct counterterrorism activities.”