Testifying before the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee , FBI Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism John Lewis said at a hearing Wednesday that environmental and animal rights groups that have turned to arson and explosives are the nation's top domestic terrorism threat . He mentioned the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front, [...]

The US House of Representatives Wednesday passed a $34 billion Department of Homeland Security Authorization Act , which provides funding for anti-terrorism programs and an overhaul of the current terrorism warning system . If the bill becomes law, it will limit the scope of future terrorism warnings to geographic regions and scrap the color-coded alert [...]

A senior military prosecutor on Wednesday took the unusual step of publicly criticizing a military investigator's recommendation not to court-martial 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano for the deaths of two Iraqis during a search for a terrorist hideout. Maj. Stephen Keane, senior trial counsel for the Marines, said that prosectors at Pantano's Article 32 hearing earlier [...]

The verdict-reading for Russian oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky continued into its fourth day Thursday, with the court saying that its sentencing would use less strict guidelines , possibly suggesting a lighter sentence for Khodorkovsky than the 10 years suggested by prosecutors. The court has now adjourned again until Friday, with still no word on whether [...]

Human Rights Watch warned Wednesday that the outcry over a retracted Newsweek story about religious abuse at Guantanamo is overshadowing genuine incidents where US personnel at the base intentionally offended the religious beliefs of Muslim detainees and desecrated the Koran. The group argued that the violent outrage over the story would not have been so [...]

With uncertainty looming in France, former French president and architect of the European Constitution Valery Giscard D'Estaing warned on Thursday that there could be no renegotiation of the treaty if French voters reject it in a referendum on May 29. Spain's government ratified the document Wednesday after strong support in a non-binding public referendum and [...]

Officials on Wednesday said a proposal is on the table that would allow the FBI greater access to business records without requiring judicial approval. After consultations with the Bush administration, Republican leaders of the US Senate Committee on Intelligence have proposed allowing the FBI to subpoena records from businesses without a judge's approval if it [...]

Republicans on the US House Armed Services Committee early Thursday backed off on an amendment to a defense bill that would have further limited women's participation in military operations, instead adopting the language of a Pentagon policy that bans women from direct ground combat roles. The amendment would have banned women from support units as [...]

UN legal experts met with Indonesian leaders Thursday to launch an inquiry into the violence and pro-Indonesian militia killings that followed the 1999 independence vote in East Timor and eventually led to the territory's emergence in 2002 as a fully independent state under the name of Timor-Leste , after a brief period of direct UN [...]

Testimony of the Honorable Joan H. Lefkow, Senate Judiciary Committee, May 18, 2005 . Excerpt: I am the fourth judge since 1978 who has been the victim of assassination as a result of "the madness in the shadows of modern life" (I borrow that phrase from the note former President Clinton wrote to me); more [...]