John Bolton Visits Judith Miller in Prison & Environment May Have Crossed Threshold in Today's Details 9/17/05

- FEMA is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, evacuees, local and federal officials say.

- Jailed NYT Reporter Judith Miller is cut off from the world. She has no Internet access, her phone calls are limited, her newspaper is a day late. A parade of prominent government and media officials, 99 in all, have visited Miller. The list includes John Bolton, the new ambassador to the UN, Tom Brokaw, former senator Robert Dole.

- A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years.

- As far back as eight years ago, Congress ordered FEMA to develop a plan for evacuating New Orleans during a massive hurricane, but the money instead went to studying the causeway bridge that spans the city's Lake Pontchartrain, officials say.