A federal judge in New York intends next week to review one of the Bush administration's most controversial legal opinions related to detainee interrogations, to decide if it has appropriately been withheld from public view.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein, of the Southern District of New York, said in an order yesterday that on Monday he intends to review an Aug. 1, 2002, memo on specific CIA interrogation techniques, marking an unusual review outside the executive branch.

The 2002 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel accompanied a broader document on the definition of torture that has already been released publicly and disavowed by the administration.

The second, still-classified memo focuses on the specific interrogation techniques that were deemed legally permissible at the CIA, according to court documents and intelligence officials. The memo was authored by then-OLC deputy John C. Yoo and includes discussion of waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning that the CIA has acknowledged using on three al-Qaeda suspects in its custody, officials have said.

Domestic demand for imports fell in March by the most since 2001, the latest indication that the economic slowdown has forced Americans to rein in their spending habits, the government reported on Friday.

Americans shied away from buying imported automobiles, which fell 9.3 percent in March, and oil, which dropped 8.9 percent. It was the second consecutive month that crude oil imports had declined. Declines were reported in a variety of other consumer goods ranging from clothing to toys and furniture.

At the same time, exports decreased for the first time in 12 months, a troubling sign for American businesses struggling with a pullback among domestic consumers. Foreign purchases have helped prop up the American economy amid the current slowdown.

For the month, the Commerce Department reported, the trade deficit narrowed to $58.2 billion from a downwardly revised $61.7 billion in February. The 5.7 percent decrease was more than economists had expected.

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Arizona, run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.

The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history. The swap involved more than 55,000 acres of land in all, including rare expanses of desert woodland and pronghorn antelope habitat. The deal had support from many local officials and the Arizona Republic newspaper for its expansion of the Prescott National Forest; but it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input.

The new law enforcement and national security concerns were prompted by Operation Cisco Raider, which has led to 15 criminal cases involving counterfeit products bought in part by military agencies, military contractors and electric power companies in the United States. Over the two-year operation, 36 search warrants have been executed, resulting in the discovery of 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components with an estimated retail value of more than $3.5 million, the F.B.I. said in a statement.

The F.B.I. is still not certain whether the ring’s actions were for profit or part of a state-sponsored intelligence effort. The potential threat, according to the F.B.I. agents who gave a briefing at the Office of Management and Budget on Jan. 11, includes the remote jamming of supposedly secure computer networks and gaining access to supposedly highly secure systems. Contents of the briefing were contained in a PowerPoint presentation leaked to a Web site, Above Top Secret.

A Cisco spokesman said that the company had investigated the counterfeit gear seized by law enforcement agencies and had not found any secret back door.

Nevada health officials said Thursday that they had identified 77 new cases of hepatitis C among patients treated at a Las Vegas endoscopy practice, in one of the country’s largest outbreaks of the liver disease. 

The officials had previously identified seven cases of the disease linked to the gastroenterology practice, one of the largest in southern Nevada, and a single case in one of the practice’s sister clinics. The infections were caused, they said, by the reuse of anesthesia syringes among multiple patients.

The practice had not received a full inspection since 2001, although state policies dictate that ambulatory surgical centers be reviewed every three years. The licensing agency has blamed the delay on insufficient financing for inspectors.

“This is a very large outbreak and a very serious illness,” said Brian Labus, the senior epidemiologist for the Southern Nevada Health District.

During General Hood’s command from 2004 to 2006, military authorities force-fed with tubes detainees who were engaging in hunger strikes at the Guantanamo prison, a step they justified as necessary to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to protest their indefinite confinement. Also during General Hood’s tenure, reports that an American guard may have desecrated a Koran stirred wide protests in the Islamic world.

The decision to withdraw General Hood’s assignment has not been announced, but it appears to reflect the widening shadow that the military prison at Guantanamo is casting over American foreign policy. While the United States considers Pakistan a close ally in its counterterrorism efforts, the accounts by Pakistanis who have returned to Pakistan after being held at Guantanamo Bay have added to anti-American sentiment in the country.

Funds were keen to shift their money into the oil market after seeing U.S. crude rise about 13 percent since the start of the month.

U.S. crude for June delivery rose as far as $124.70, surpassing the previous record of $124.61 hit on Thursday.

By 1:25 a.m. EDT (0525 GMT), the June crude contract was $124.55 a barrel on the Globex electronic trading platform, up 86 cents, or 0.7 percent.

That question has kicked up a minor ruckus in political circles this week as Arianna Huffington and the McCain campaign have traded he-said, she-said barbs.

On her Huffington Post Web site on Monday, Ms. Huffington, the liberal blogger, said she had heard McCain say at a Los Angeles dinner party shortly after the 2000 election that he had not voted for the president he has now publicly embraced in his own quest for the White House. The McCain campaign swiftly quashed the account and said Ms. Huffington had a book to promote and would make anything up.

Stoned on speed, Elvis Presley arrived at the White House wearing a purple velvet suit and bearing gifts for President Richard Nixon - a Colt .45 pistol and some silver bullets.

It was Dec. 21, 1970, and Elvis had a mission: He wanted Nixon to give him a federal narcotics agent's badge so he could carry dope and guns wherever he went. Nixon didn't give Elvis the badge, but he did pose for pictures with the King of Rock-and-Roll.

Nineteen years later, newspapers reported that the Elvis-Nixon photos were the most requested pictures in the federal government's vast photo collection, and Tom Blanton responded the same way he responds to so many other interesting news stories: He filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

"When the president meets with anybody, there's a whole paper trail, so we filed a FOIA request and got the entire file released," says Blanton, who is the director of the National Security Archive, a private research group devoted to prying documents out of the federal government's files and making them public.

"We see his hand directing all the affairs of the country," Ahmadinejad told theological students in the city of Mashad during a speech that appears to have been given last month but was not broadcast until Tuesday. "A movement has started for us to occupy ourselves with our global responsibilities. God willing, Iran will be the axis of the leadership of this movement," said Ahmadinejad.

Several clerics in the Iranian parliament accused Ahmadinejad of implying that Imam Mahdi or Imam Zaman (Imam of the Age), as the Shiite messiah is also called, supports his government. Since the 1979 revolution, Iran's government has been overseen by Shiite clerics, but religious leaders here have resisted Ahmadinejad's frequent hints that his government's actions are guided by the Mahdi.

Clerics said in interviews published Wednesday that the president should not use the imam to his political advantage or to silence critics of the government.

"I think no one doubts that our tandem will grow strong," Medvedev said in a short speech presenting his nominee to the lower house of parliament, called the State Duma. "Today, the most important task is to maintain our present course."

Lawmakers voted 392 to 56 to approve Putin's appointment, with only Communist Party deputies opposing his candidacy. Medvedev later signed a decree formalizing the appointment. Putin's United Russia party holds 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma, and two of the other three parties also support him.

Barred by the constitution from seeking a third term as president, Putin's assumption of the ostensibly subordinate position of prime minister has fueled speculation about how this novel power-sharing arrangement with Medvedev will work and whether it is, in fact, a mechanism to propel Putin back into the Kremlin.

It would be the first drop in full-year profit in seven years for the automaker.

The results and outlook released Thursday highlight how the tough North American auto market is hammering profits. Meanwhile, unfavorable currency swings added to a growing list of problems for Toyota Motor Corp., including soaring material and energy costs and a stagnant auto market in its home market of Japan.

"There is no mistake that things are seriously tough - even for Toyota," said Tsuyoshi Mochimaru, auto analyst at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo.

The FBI has withdrawn a secret administrative order seeking the name, address and online activity of a patron of the Internet Archive after the San Francisco-based digital library filed suit to block the action.

It is one of only three known instances in which the FBI has backed off from such a data demand, known as a "national security letter," or NSL, which is not subject to judicial approval and whose recipient is barred from disclosing the order's existence.

NSLs are served on phone companies, Internet service providers and other electronic communications service providers, but because of the gag order provision, the public has little way to know about them. Their use soared after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, when Congress relaxed the standard for their issuance. FBI officials now issue about 50,000 such orders a year.

The order against the Internet Archive was served Nov. 26, and the nonprofit challenged it based on a provision of the reauthorized USA Patriot Act, which protects libraries from such requests. The privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation represented the archive in the suit, which was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union. 

“All the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” said Paul Risley, of the U.N.'s World Food Program, in Bangkok.

The program said it would send in two relief flights as planned on Saturday, while negotiations continued with the government about the distribution of supplies.

Myanmar has only allowed a handful of flights in the last two days after blocking most international aid - including necessities like food, water, medicine and blankets and tents.

The United States and Russia have expelled five diplomats and military attaches from each other's countries in moves reminiscent of the tit-for-tat exchanges of the Cold War, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The most recent expulsions, ordered by Russia on April 28, were of two American military attaches at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. They were preceded by the expulsion of a Russian diplomat from Washington on April 22, the expulsion of a U.S. diplomat from Moscow on April 14 and the expulsion of a New York-based Russian diplomat on Nov. 6.

The U.S. State Department said Russia's most recent action was "not justified" but that it would comply with the order. Spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was treating them as separate incidents and that Washington considered the matter closed.

"We're not making any particular connection between the expulsion of these two individuals and any previous steps that we might have taken," said McCormack. "As far as we're concerned, we don't intend to take any further actions."

He will soon play a major role in deciding the fate of one such bill, to help struggling homeowners, that the House passed, 266 to 154, on Thursday.

Over the years, his critics say, Shelby’s ties to the mortgage industry and the Alabama real estate market, and the generous campaign donations he receives from financial services companies, have distorted his perspective and led him to delay critical legislative remedies.

Indeed, Shelby’s legislative and business worlds have often intersected. For instance, while on the Banking Committee, he financed an apartment complex he owns in Tuscaloosa with a $5 million loan from Freddie Mac, the same government-sponsored mortgage company whose regulation his committee is reshaping.

In the worst three months of the company’s 89-year history, A.I.G. lost $7.81 billion, primarily from bad investments in complex financial instruments. The loss of $3.09 a share, reported after the market’s close Thursday, was four times worse than Wall Street analysts had expected.

The venerable insurer now joins the ranks of other industry giants that have suffered huge losses because of the recent tumult in the financial markets. This is the first time A.I.G. has lost money in two consecutive quarters.

To shore up its finances, the company will seek to raise $12.5 billion by selling new stock and fixed-income securities. Despite the painful quarter, the company plans to raise its dividend by 10 percent - half its usual increase - which will cost an additional $202 million on an annualized basis.

Shares of the company closed at $44.15, down 93 cents, or 2 percent. In after-hours trading, A.I.G. shares fell another 7 percent, and the ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch lowered the company’s credit ratings.

His new pursuit?

“Prawns,” said Wilson, nearly bursting out laughing because, here in Salmon Nation, he could not quite believe things had come to this. “It’s what you call a ‘developmental fishery.’ We don’t know if we’ll make any money in it, but we figured we could either go broke sitting still or we could go broke working.”

With most of Oregon and California's commercial salmon fishery shut down because of sharp declines in the number of the fish returning to the Sacramento River to spawn, Wilson and many other fishermen are looking for almost any alternative, trying to diversify along with the rest of the regional economy. In some cases, they are investing money they received from the federal government because of a partial shutdown of salmon fishing in 2006.

This year, the governors of the three West Coast states, citing what they say will be a $290 million economic loss, have asked Congress to again provide disaster relief.

Faced with a national outcry over the high price of gasoline and soaring profits for energy companies, the oil and gas industry is waging an unusually pricey campaign to burnish its image.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the industry's main lobby, has embarked on a multiyear, multimedia, multimillion-dollar campaign, which includes advertising in the nation's largest newspapers, news conferences in many state capitals and trips for bloggers out to drilling platforms at sea.

The intended audience is elected officials and the public, with an emphasis on the latter. The industry is trying to convince voters - who, in turn, will make the case to their members of Congress - that rising energy prices are not the producers' fault and that government efforts to punish the industry, especially with higher taxes, would only make pricing problems worse.

"We decided that if we didn't do something to help people understand the basics of our industry, we'd be on the losing end as far as the eye could see," said Red Cavaney, the institute's president.

It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother's Day, comes this: A majority of the House Republicans have voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kansas), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Florida), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a re-vote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

Who can forget the classic line uttered by Commodore Perry during the War of 1812's Battle of Lake Erie: "We have met the enemy and they are ours!" Perry, then age 28, kicked serious British naval butt in that decisive victory.

Nearly two centuries later, the famed comic strip creator Walt Kelly twisted that line for the benefit of his seminal character, the possum Pogo. On an Earth Day poster in 1971, Pogo, looking at a polluted stream proclaimed, "We have met the enemy and he is us!" The same line was also used in a cartoon to lampoon the Nixon Administration, so the creator's use was to point a critical finger at things government, in Kelly's opinion, was doing wrong.

You, dear Reader, are probably asking, Why are we going through this lesson?

Because of headlines like the ones found in many IT publications this week: Feds look to local law enforcement to help stop terrorists.

Gee, what a revelation! Let me tell you a story about what happened here in Florida that had direct bearing on 9/11, could have even stopped 9/11, and still is not taken as seriously as it should.

Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez was shot as he was entering his apartment building in the Colonia Guerrero neighborhood, a poor section of Mexico City that associates say he chose because it was close to law enforcement offices. The killing of such a high-ranking official in Mexico's capital - a veteran officer protected round-the-clock by bodyguards - seemed to suggest that almost no one is immune from the violence that has swept Mexico in recent months.

Millan Gomez was hit by at least nine bullets and died at the hospital, said a police spokesman. One suspect was arrested and was being questioned by police.

Thousands of trees lie where they fell, jetties on the Yangon River have collapsed into the water and only a few traffic lights are working across the city of five million people.

Most of Yangon remains without electricity and even the local branch of the Ministry of Energy has no power.

The death toll in Yangon has been small compared with the devastation in the delta of the Irrawaddy River. The government counts fewer than 400 people killed here compared with the more than 22,000, and by some unofficial estimates possibly tens of thousands more, dead over all in Myanmar since the huge cyclone hit on Saturday.

The inability of the government to clear debris and restore basic utilities like water and power in what is the country’s wealthiest city are a measure of how difficult Myanmar’s overall disaster recovery could be.

The prospect that Fossella could face a mandatory jail sentence if convicted had already threatened to bring to an end  his decade-long career in the U.S. House, where Fossella is the only Republican representing New York City. The Daily News has reported that Fossella called Fay for help after his arrest and told officers that he was on his way to Grimm Street, where Fay lives, to visit a sick daughter. As speculation swirled over Fossella’s relationship with Fay in recent days, his aides said only that they were good friends.

On Capitol Hill, the Fossella story was just more bad news for House Republicans, who are struggling to get off the defensive in the upcoming elections having already lost two special elections in two districts long held by Republicans, with another one at risk in Mississippi next Tuesday.

His death, at a care facility near Nashville, was confirmed by the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum.

From his debonair attire to the savvy with which he adapted his sound to popular trends, Mr. Arnold personified the evolution of country music in the years after World War II, from a rural vernacular to an idiom with broad mainstream appeal.

“I’ve never thought of myself as a country and western singer,” he told a reporter for The Charlotte Observer in 1968. “With the type material I do, I’m really a pop music artist.” He added, “I want my songs to be accepted by everyone.”

A veteran Republican lawmaker called on Office of Special Counsel (OSC) chief Scott J. Bloch to resign Wednesday, one day after nearly two dozen FBI agents raided OSC headquarters and carted off boxes of documents and equipment that officials said were related to a probe of Bloch's activities.

"In light of the various investigations into Mr. Bloch's conduct, including the FBI probe revealed yesterday, it's hard to believe he can continue to operate effectively," U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (Virginia), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement. "It's time the OSC put this turbulent period behind it."

Bloch, appointed by President Bush in 2003 to protect government whistle-blowers and to enforce prohibitions on political activity in the federal workplace, is facing allegations of political bias, obstruction of justice and mismanagement. The inspector general at the Off ice of Personnel Management has investigated Bloch since 2005 over alleged mistreatment of employees and his handling of whistle-blower cases, but Tuesday's raid was a significant escalation.

Bloch and more than a dozen current and former OSC employees have been served with subpoenas to appear before a grand jury, which will probably begin hearing testimony the week of May 19, sources familiar with the investigation said. The lead prosecutor is Assistant U.S. Attorney James Mitzelfeld, who works on public corruption cases.