AP - Decades of mistakes — some as basic as not knowing the elevation of New Orleans — led the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to believe its levees and floodwalls would protect the city from a storm as strong as Hurricane Katrina, a report released Wednesday concludes.

Reuters - Repairing damage to a space shuttle fuel tank from a freak hailstorm will push the next launch of Atlantis from April to mid-May at the earliest, NASA managers said on Wednesday.

AP - NASA managers won't decide until next month when to try launching Atlantis on the year's first space shuttle mission, giving technicians more time to assess hail damage to its external fuel tank, officials said Wednesday.

AP - Al Gore made an emotional return to Congress Wednesday to plead with lawmakers to fight global warming with moral courage while revealing nothing about whether he'll join the 2008 presidential race.

AFP - Armed with an Oscar, tipped as a possible Nobel laureate and hailed as a champion of the environment, Al Gore Wednesday swept back into Congress for the first time since he had to announce his defeat in the 2000 presidential elections.

Reuters - Next-generation hybrid cars could one day help ease corn prices that have doubled as greater supplies of the grain are distilled into ethanol fuel, and could also head off potential meat and dairy price boosts, a U.S. environmentalist said on Wednesday.

Reuters - Al Gore -- star of an Oscar-winning movie, former U.S. vice president and the object of 2008 presidential speculation -- on Wednesday took his crusade against global warming to Capitol Hill.