Civil liberties groups sued the Treasury Department on Tuesday over its refusal to permit them to challenge the federal government's claim of authority to target U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism overseas for killing.
The Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit against the department and its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in U.S. District Court in Washington.
Civil rights groups sue Treasury over targeting of terror suspects for killing
Germany Gave Names to Secret US Taliban Hit List
The Afghanistan war logs obtained by WikiLeaks revealed the existence of Task Force 373, a secret US unit assigned with eliminating Taliban leaders. Now SPIEGEL has learned that the German government provided names to the hit list used by the unit. At least one of the men is now dead
Thanks to the WikiLeaks revelations, war-weary Germany now knows that German officials added names to the JPEL at least 13 times.
Pentagon questions drug study on troops
The Department of Defense is investigating whether 80 wounded American service members in Iraq were improperly used as subjects in a test of a possible treatment for brain injuries, according to the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General.
The study, sponsored by the United States Naval Medical Center in San Diego, was designed to test whether a drug made to treat Tylenol overdoses, among other uses, could also reduce the harmful effects of traumatic brain injury, such as balance loss and brain function problems, in service members who had been hit by explosions.
Wikileaks wants Pentagon’s aid in reviewing a new batch of U.S. military secrets
Julian Assange wants the Pentagon’s help. His secretive WikiLeaks website tells The Daily Beast it is making an urgent request to the Defense Department for help in reviewing 15,000 still-secret American military reports to remove the names of Afghan civilians and others who might be endangered when the website makes the reports public.
The request follows statements of regret from Assange and others at WikiLeaks that the site may have unintentionally endangered Afghan civilians with its first massive document dump—72,000 leaked classified American military reports from Afghanistan that revealed the names and home villages of hundreds of local informants who cooperated with American forces there.
GOP House Members Are Setting the Stage for Investigations of Obama
President Barack Obama has stubbornly taken a "look forward, not backwards" philosophy to possible criminal acts during the Bush administration. But Republicans are sending signals that they will not take such an approach if they are able to win back the U.S. House of Reprsentatives in the November elections.
U.S. group launches campaign against West Bank settlement construction
Americans for Peace Now, a sister group to the dovish Israeli group Peace Now, has announced the launching a unique campaign on Monday, meant to sway public opinion against containing settlement construction.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the construction freeze West Bank settlements, due to expire on September 26, in last November, after months of pressure from the Obama administration, and following a Palestinian refusal to begin talks without one.
Well spilled 4.9M barrels, new numbers reveal
The blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico gushed even more oil than the worst case scenario envisioned, a whopping total of 4.9 million barrels, or 205.8 million gallons, according to a new analysis by government scientists charged with estimating the flow rate.
BP's Macondo well spewed 62,000 barrels of oil a day initially, and as the reservoir gradually depleted itself the flow eased to 53,000 barrels a day until the well was finally capped and sealed on July 15, according to scientists in the Flow Rate Technical Group, supervised by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Department of Energy.
SEC probes BP as it poised to "kill" Gulf well
U.S. regulators were investigating BP Plc on Monday for possible insider trading related to its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a move that may hurt the energy giant's efforts to restore investor confidence.
Details of the probe emerged as BP prepared to deliver the first of what it hopes will be two knockout blows to "kill" its ruptured Macondo well, 105 days after it started gushing out millions of gallons of oil, causing an environmental disaster.
Immigration memo may be a break for immigrants
An internal memo prepared for the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says it is possible to provide green cards or delay deportation for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are now living and working in the United States without papers or permanent residence.
The recent memo to USCIS director Alejandro Mayorkas, released in Washington late Thursday, said one group that could receive green cards are the almost 400,000 current holders of Temporary Protected Status who include Salvadorans, Haitians, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.
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