A lengthy Senate investigation has debunked charges by a Republican congressman that military analysts identified Mohamed Atta and other Sept. 11 hijackers before the attacks, according to a committee aide familiar with the report.

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true. […]

Refugees from the vanished Lohachara island and the disappearing Ghoramara island have fled to Sagar, but this island has already lost 7,500 acres of land to the sea. In all, a dozen islands, home to 70,000 people, are in danger of being submerged by the rising seas.

Federal prosecutors are trying to force the ACLU to turn over copies of a classified document it received from a source, using what legal experts called a new extension of the Bush administration’s efforts to protect national-security secrets.

Globally, a pattern has emerged; large aquatic animals are disappearing. The world’s river dolphins and large freshwater fish face the biggest threats, including overfishing, dams, navigation projects, pollution, and habitat destruction.

The Active Denial System technology is ready to deploy, but the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.