Free Republic

Greenland’s enormous ice sheet is melting at such an accelerated rate that it may have reached a “tipping point,” and could become a major factor in sea-level rise around the world within two decades, scientists said in a study published on Monday. The Arctic is warming at twice the average rate of the rest of the planet, and the new research adds to the evidence that the ice loss in Greenland, which lies mainly above the Arctic Circle, is speeding up as the warming increases. The authors found that ice loss in 2012 was nearly four times the rate in...

NEW ORLEANS — Nearly 10 years on, one might assume that the case of Hurricane Katrina is closed. That the catastrophic flooding of this city was caused not merely by a powerful storm but primarily by fatal engineering flaws in the city’s flood protection system has been proved by experts, acknowledged by the United States Army Corps of Engineers and underscored by residents here to anyone who might suggest otherwise. But the efforts to establish responsibility with ever more precision — to ascertain just how many of those flaws were due to engineering, politics or money — have not stopped....

Nearly a million poor people continue to be denied representation in the nation’s courts because legal aid clinics lack sufficient financing, a federally supported legal agency reported Tuesday. “There still exists a substantial justice gap in this country,” said Helaine M. Barnett, president of the nonprofit agency, the Legal Services Corporation, which receives appropriations from Congress to support more than 900 legal aid offices for low-income clients in civil cases across the country.