Valerie E. Caproni, the F.B.I.'s general counsel, has said the government is trying to prevent its existing surveillance power from eroding. Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say. The... 

Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old computer salesman and community college student, took his car in for an oil change earlier this month and his mechanic spotted an odd wire hanging from the undercarriage. The wire was attached to a strange magnetic device that puzzled Afifi and the mechanic. They freed it from the car and posted images of it online, asking for help in identifying it. Two days later, FBI... 

A conspiracy theorist noticed that an image in NASA’s Astronomy Picture Of The Day had noticeable Photoshop brushstrokes in it, when you turned up the contrast. Is there a mysterious object hiding near Saturn’s moons? Check out the official image of Dione and Titan, above. A YouTube user named DominatorPS3 turned up the contrast on the image, and discovered brush strokes. You can just... 

An employee of Akamai, one of the world’s largest Internet content delivery providers, was arrested and charged with wire fraud after he allegedly tried to sell confidential company data to a foreign government. Elliot Doxer, 42, of Brookline, MA, worked in Akamai’s finance department where he had access to customer information, contracts and invoices. According to the authorities, in... 

Hungarian disaster management spokesman Dr Attila Nyikos says a large scale clean-up is under way Hungary says it will cost tens of millions of dollars and take at least a year to clean up the damage caused by a spill of toxic, red industrial sludge. Emergency workers are trying to stop the spill, from an alumina plant, from flowing into major waterways, including the River Danube A state of emergency... 

Though the administration is also on the verge of getting broad powers to destroy the entire Internet on national security grounds, President Obama is also seeking Congressional approval for a bill that would grant him virtually limitless power to wiretap online communications as well. The bill would require every single online service with even a peripheral capability of allowing for communication... 

Two Croatian MiG-21 fighter jets crashed Thursday during an exercise, but both pilots ejected safely, the defence ministry said. A person on the ground was wounded by a flying object. The two planes “had an accident in the air and both fell down,” the ministry said without specifying whether they collided. Minister Branko Vukelic said an investigation into the cause of the accident is... 

Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans have failed to grasp how Muslim immigration has transformed their country and will have to come to terms with more mosques than churches throughout the countryside, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily. “Our country continues to change, and integration is also the task for society to deal with immigrants,” Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper.... 

THE actual figure of the US’ national debt is much higher than the official sum of $US13.4 trillion ($14.3 trillion) given by the Congressional Budget Office, according to analysts cited by the New York Post. “The Government is lying about the amount of debt. It is engaging in Enron accounting,” said Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University and co-author of The Coming... 

An Islamic revolution akin to the one that swept through Iran in 1979 could easily take place in Sweden, claims the second highest ranking member of the far-right Sweden Democrats. “It can happen really fast,” said Sweden Democrat party secretary Björn Söder to the TT news agency. Söder is number two behind party leader Jimmie Åkesson on the Sweden Democrat party list. As party secretary,... 

Marine Le Pen says she is not racist but a multicultural country can never live in peace. Marine Le Pen was late back from lunch. This is a common condition among French politicians but unusual for Le Pen. She is known for being on time and being polite, charming and, unlike her father, difficult to dislike. She arrived “only” 20 minutes late. The National Front, she says, is not a racist... 

NSA chief, Keith Alexander The United States’ increasing reliance on the Internet makes securing our networks from online threats more crucial than ever, according to National Security Agency director and U.S. Cyber Command commander Keith Alexander. Speaking at the Gov 2.0 Summit on Tuesday in Washington, Alexander warned against the growing threat from hackers and enemy states seeking to penetrate... 

Jens John raising a variation of the German flag in his garden in Brandenburg an der Havel, Germany. A truck driver, Mr. John has often been without work in the economic downturn. As a youth in the 1950s, the film director Volker Schlöndorff tried to hide his German origins by learning to speak unaccented French. This summer, his daughter painted German flags on her cheeks and joined crowds of thousands... 

While many European Catholic bishops often defend the rights of Muslims to worship publicly others are more keen to protect the Christian heritage of their continent. European Christians must have more children or face the prospect of the continent becoming Islamised, a senior Vatican official has said. Italian Father Piero Gheddo said that the low birth rate among indigenous Europeans combined with... 

Youths trying to extinguish a fire near the Jewish West bank settlement of Har Bracha on Monday July 26, 2010. ‘Idea is not to make Wikipedia rightist but for it to include our point of view,’ Naftali Bennett, director of the Yesha Council says. “Point of view” in Wikipedia? But encyclopedias were supposed to be neutral… For years now, Wikipedia has been a fierce battleground...