A drug-resistant bacteria that is infecting wounded US soldiers in Iraq – and has spread to civilian hospitals in parts of Europe – accidentally evolved in US military hospitals in Iraq.

“By creating the most heroic and efficient means of saving lives in the history of warfare, the Pentagon had accidentally invented a machine for accelerating bacterial evolution and was airlifting the pathogens halfway around the world.”

Three elections workers in the state’s most populous county conspired to avoid a more thorough recount of ballots in the 2004 presidential election, a prosecutor told jurors during opening statements at their trial Thursday.

Witnesses testified that, two days before a planned recount, selected ballots were counted so the result would be determined.

“The evidence will show that this recount was rigged, maybe not for political reasons, but rigged nonetheless,” Prosecutor Kevin Baxter said. “They did this so they could spend a day rather than weeks or months” on the recount, he said.

President Bush has decided not to renew a program of domestic spying on terrorism suspects, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Wednesday, ending a tactic criticized for infringing on civil liberties.

Gonzales said electronic surveillance will be subject to approval from a secret but independent court, which Democrats in Congress and other critics have demanded during more than a year of fierce debate.

A unique partnership was introduced at a Washington news conference today, as a dozen evangelical and scientific leaders announced a new joint effort to protect the environment and defend “life on earth,” according to a press release received by RAW STORY.

The coalition’s leaders “shared concerns about human-caused threats to Creation – including climate change, habitat destruction, pollution, species extinction, the spread of human infectious diseases, and other dangers to the well-being of societies.”

The abrupt acceleration of melting in Greenland has taken climate scientists by surprise. Tidewater glaciers, which discharge ice into the oceans as they break up in the process called calving, have doubled and tripled in speed all over Greenland. Ice shelves are breaking up, and summertime “glacial earthquakes” have been detected within the ice sheet.

“The general thinking until very recently was that ice sheets don’t react very quickly to climate,” said Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. “But that thinking is changing right now, because we’re seeing things that people have thought are impossible.”