WASHINGTON – A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and personal residence, an order that could spark a late election-season debate over lobbyists’ White House access. While researching the access lobbyists and others had on the White House, The Washington Post asked in June for two years of White House visitor logs. The Secret Service refused to process the request. A U.S. District judge said Wednesday that, by the end of next week, the Secret Service must produce the records or at least identity them and justify why they are being withheld.

New Jersey: Subterranean bacteria

A team of scientists has found bacteria living nearly two miles below ground, dining on sulfur in a world of steaming water and radioactive rock. A single cell may live a century before it gets up the energy to divide. The organisms will probably survive as long as the planet does, drawing energy from the stygian world around them. What is unusual is that their home contains no nutrients traceable to photosynthesis. They are “an organism that dominates that environment by feeding off an essentially inexhaustible source of energy – radiation,” said a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the team.

California: No meditation club

Plans for a public high school meditation club evaporated this week after parents caught wind that students would be taught Transcendental Meditation, which critics argue is a form of religion. Faced with protests from parents, a foundation backed by filmmaker David Lynch on Tuesday withdrew the $175,000 it had pledged to Terra Linda High School in San Rafael. The grant would have provided funds for 250 students and 25 staffers to practice the meditation style developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Connecticut: Judge hits officer

A federal judge in a sport utility ran into a police officer directing traffic in the rain, critically injuring the officer, authorities said Thursday. The New Haven police chief said Senior Judge John M. Walker, 65, was “very much distraught” over the Tuesday night crash. Officer Dan Picagli, 38, was in critical condition Thursday at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He had been wearing a black raincoat and a reflective vest when he was hit, the chief said.

Girl wasn’t molested, report says

Police have concluded that a 2-year-old girl was not molested by a neighbor whom the girl’s father is accused of stabbing to death in rage, a police official said Thursday. Jonathon Edington, a 29-year-old attorney from Fairfield, is charged with killing Barry James on Aug. 28 after his wife told him their daughter had indicated James touched her inappropriately, police said. “We’re confident this 2-year-old was not molested,” a police spokesman said. “We are confident in our investigation that Mr. Edington did in fact kill Mr. James.”