COVER: "FEAR & THE FLU. The New Age of Pandemics." Contributor Laurie Garrett writes about the H1N1 flu virus and how it has spread from pigs and birds to humans around the globe. She explains why microbes like the H1N1 flu have become a growing threat.

COVER: "TO BOLDLY GO ... HOW 'STAR TREK' TAUGHT US TO DREAM BIG." Contributor Steve Daly writes about the upcoming "Star Trek" movie, the 11th in the franchise, which opens next week.

The U.S. government Tuesday dropped charges against five Guantanamo detainees without prejudice, meaning they could be reinstated. Chief military prosecutor Col. Lawrence J. Morris said supervising lawyers had asked the Pentagon to withdraw the charges, The New York Times reported.

WASHINGTON _ The CIA, which had authority to use harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorist detainees, advised U.S. military officials at Guantanamo in 2002 on how far they could go in extracting information from captives there, documents released at a Senate hearing Tuesday show.

Military lawyers warned against the harsh detainee interrogation techniques approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, contending in separate memos weeks before Rumsfeld's endorsement that they could be illegal, a Senate panel has found.