The National Security Agency plans to release details about the “dozens” of terror plots thwarted by the use of recently leaked surveillance programs, but Washington’s elite is still split on the issue.

On the eve of the NSA’s expected disclosure, opinions on the controversial surveillance programs leaked earlier this month by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden remain varied. Read More

MSM outlets haven’t really mentioned what happened or any updates..

A massive explosion has rocked Manhattan, few blocks away from the UN headquarters. Police and firefighters are at the scene. Initial reports suggest that an underground transformer exploded setting nearby cars on fire.

The incident occurred at the intersection of 50th street and 2nd Avenue. There have been no immediate reports of casualties. Read More

By Michael McAuliff

The U.S. House of Representatives voted again Thursday to allow the indefinite military detention of Americans, blocking an amendment that would have barred the possibility.

Congress wrote that authority into law in the National Defense Authorization Act two years ago, prompting outrage from civil libertarians on the left and right. Read More

Two United States citizens can’t sue the federal government and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for being subjected to torture while detained by US force during the Iraq War, the Supreme Court decided Monday.

The high court rejected an appeal early Monday filed by Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel, two US citizens who say Mr. Rumsfeld should be held responsible for the treatment they endured while detained for several weeks in 2006. Both men were placed in a military prison in Baghdad for around three months that summer. Read More

The US Transportation Security Administration is unable to prove that an expensive and controversial pat-down program does not screen airline passengers based on race, according to a report by the inspector general in the Department of Homeland Security.

The Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) program was instituted in 2004 and has long been criticized for allowing untrained officers to use race as an excuse to scrutinize travelers. Read More

A US Muslim alleges he was held illegally for 106 days by FBI agents and was subjected to severe beatings. The plaintiff said he was abused when he refused to become an informant at the Portland Mosque he attended while living in the US. Yonas Fikre, a Sudanese man of Eritrean descent has filed a lawsuit against the FBI for $30 million and several injunctions for his mistreatment in custody in 2011. Read More

Iraq’s defense ministry said on Saturday that it has broken up an Al-Qaeda cell that was working to produce poison gas at two locations in the capital for future attacks at home and abroad.

The group of five people built two facilities to produce sarin and mustard gas, using instructions from another Al-Qaeda group, spokesman Mohammed al-Askari told a news conference. Read More

By Ben Popken

(The scanners are still there, still invading our privacy) The Transportation Security Administration announced it has finished removing from all airports the X-ray technology that produced graphic and controversial images of passengers passing through security screening checkpoints.

In a letter released Thursday, TSA administrator John Pistole told the House Homeland Security committee that as of May 16, all US airports scanners equipped with the ability to produce the penetrating images will now only show a generic outline of a passenger to the operator. A colored box pops up if the full-body scanner detects a potentially forbidden item. Read More

by Kevin Genovario

The deadly poison ricin has been detected in a letter addressed to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as in a second letter addressed to the Washington, D.C., offices of the Bloomberg-backed Mayors Against Illegal Guns, reports the New York Times. Read More

By Conor Friedersdorf

Last week, President Obama declassified the fact that four American citizens have been killed in U.S. drone strikes “to facilitate transparency and debate on this issue,” according to his speech. The fact that he could do so without harming national security raises the question of why that information wasn’t made available sooner. Better late than never, I suppose. But Americans still don’t know why one of those Americans, a 16-year-old youth, was killed. Read More

Russia’s FSB has foiled a terror attack in Moscow as they managed to kill two and detain one of the militants planning it, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said. “Our forceful actions prevented an attempted act of terror in the capital,” the National Anti-Terror Committee said in a statement. Read More

By Will Potter

Most people have heard of tree-sitting—a tactic environmentalists use to prevent old-growth trees from being cut down and whole forests decimated. In its heyday, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, members of groups like Earth First! Read More

Even after cutting off the head of al-Qaeda, the United States Department of Defense doesn’t believe an end to the war on terror is in sight. On Thursday, one Pentagon official predicted the mission against al-Qaeda could continue for another two decades.

Speaking to the Senate Armed Services early Thursday, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Michael Sheehan said the Pentagon has no plans to pull out of its almost 12-year-old war overseas. Read More

AUSTRALIA’S armed forces needs to be protected from any risk of being charged with terrorism, an expert committee has recommended. The committee’s review of Australia’s counter-terrorism legislation says the present definition of a terrorist act theoretically encompassed Australian forces in authorised military operations abroad. Read More

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court quietly rubber stamped nearly 2,000 government requests to search or electronically monitor people in the United States last year, according to a Justice Department report published this week.

The agency, which oversees requests for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign intelligence agents on US soil Read More