The Bush administration is finalizing changes to the Endangered Species Act that would ensure that federal agencies would not have to take global warming into account when assessing risks to imperiled plants and animals.
The main purpose of the new regulations, which were first unveiled in August, is to eliminate a long-standing provision of the Endangered Species Act that requires an independent scientific review by either the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of any federal project that could affect a protected species. Under the administration's proposal, individual agencies could decide on their own whether a project would harm an imperiled species.
The Associated Press, like virtually every business in the world, is defining strategies for operating in these complex and difficult financial times," the company added in a statement.
A group of Algerians who were ordered released from Guantanamo Bay on Thursday have long denied being terrorists, saying they were swept up in Bosnia and handed over to the U.S. as political pawns.
