The latest international update on climate change says global warming is turning oceans acidic and threatening marine life but offers new hope - the cost of tackling carbon emissions is modest and the means to do it are already available.

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yesterday delivered its strongest warning yet, calling the rise in global temperatures “unequivocal” and its effects potentially irreversible and laying blame - with at least 90 per cent probability - on humans.

Satellite imaging has revealed that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in America, an essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely damaged some 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana.

The die-off, caused by wind and later by weeks-long pooling of stagnant water, was so massive researchers say it will add significantly to the greenhouse gas buildup - ultimately putting as much carbon from dying vegetation into the air as the rest of the U.S. forest takes out in a year of photosynthesis. Also, the downing of so many trees has opened vast and sometimes fragile tracts of land to several aggressive and fast-growing exotic species that are squeezing out far more environmentally productive native species.

The US military is experiencing a “suicide epidemic” with veterans killing themselves at the rate of 120 a week, according to an investigation by US television network CBS.

At least 6,256 US veterans committed suicide in 2005 – an average of 17 a day – the network reported, with veterans overall more than twice as likely to take their own lives as the rest of the general population.

A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a “secret room” to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell’s 1984.

The Prince Group, the holding company that owns Blackwater Worldwide, has been building an operation that will sniff out intelligence about natural disasters, business-friendly governments, overseas regulations and global political developments for clients in industry and government.

Because of its roster and its ties to owner Erik Prince, the multimillionaire former Navy SEAL, the company’s thrust into this world highlights the blurring of lines between government, industry and activities formerly reserved for agents operating in the shadows.