"The Navy has obtained authority to blast and sink as many as two real ships a year in the Gulf of Alaska over the next five years to give pilots and gunners authentic targets for their sights."

"For aid donors and humanitarian agencies, it is a Faustian bargain: reach and save tens of thousands of people on the verge of starving to death. The price: come to an 'understanding' with one of the most active affiliates of al Qaeda, and perhaps help it retain control of large swathes of Somalia."

"Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked rebels, who banned foreign aid groups in regions under their control two years ago, have appealed for help for thousands of people devastated by a severe drought."

"A bloody outbreak of fighting that has ended a 17-year ceasefire between Burmese government forces and a tribal militia was partly caused by the expansion of Chinese hydropower along the Irrawaddy river, conservationists claim."

"Libya’s enormous aquatic reserves could potentially become a new weapon of choice if government forces opt to starve coastal cities that heavily rely on free flowing freshwater."

CIA intelligence analysts have focused more intensely in the past year on a threat to national security they find highly worrisome: geopolitical chaos caused by climate change. Speaking on background, they say the U.S. is frighteningly unprepared. The CIA analysts must stay anonymous, because the public is not supposed to know.

"Rare minerals. Food and water. Arable soil. Air-cleansing forests. In the intellectual heart of the American military and policy-making world, these are emerging not just as environmental issues, but as the potential stuff of conflict in the 21st century."

"President Obama’s hopes of ratifying a new arms control treaty with Russia by the end of the year appeared to come undone on Tuesday as the chief Senate Republican negotiator moved to block a vote on the pact, one of the White House’s top foreign policy goals, in the lame-duck session of Congress."

"As President Obama pushes for ratification of his signature nuclear treaty with Russia in coming days, all eyes are on one Republican."

"In a long-running legal battle between a Hawaiian community and the U.S. Army, a federal judge today ruled that the community has a right to know how live-fire military training in a nearby valley could damage cultural sites and marine resources."

"With insurgents increasingly attacking the American fuel supply convoys that lumber across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, the military is pushing aggressively to develop, test and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels."

"The Environmental Protection Agency wants to regulate a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel that has contaminated drinking water supplies, reversing a decision made under the Bush administration."

"Environmental degradation and waning natural resources threaten U.S. security in the 21st century, in a shift from 'kinetic' security threats, defense experts told a Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday."

FBI agents during the Bush administration "investigated members of the environmental advocacy group Greenpeace over their protest activities 'with little or no basis,' [a Justice Department Inspector General's] report said. Agents kept the case open for more than three years, even though no charges were filed, and put the activists on a terrorist watch list, it said."

"According to recently leaked documents, the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security has been tracking anti-gas drilling groups and their meetings — including a public screening of the film 'Gasland,' a documentary about the environmental hazards of natural gas drilling."