Supporters say it's an unambiguous answer to random violence, while critics - including police chiefs and prosecutors - warn that criminals are more likely to benefit than innocent victims.

Ten states so far this year have passed a version of the law, after Florida was the first last year. It's already being considered in Arizona in the case of a deadly shooting on a hiking trail.

Supporters have dubbed the new measures "stand your ground" laws, while critics offered nicknames like the "shoot first," "shoot the Avon lady" or "right to commit murder" laws.

At its core, they broaden self-defense by removing the requirement in most states that a person who is attacked has a "duty to retreat" before turning to deadly force. Many of the laws specify that people can use deadly force if they believe they are in danger in any place they have a legal right to be - a parking lot, a street, a bar, a church. They also give immunity from criminal charges and civil liability.

The campaign is simply about self-defense, said Oklahoma state Rep. Kevin Calvey, a Republican and author of the law in his state. "Law-abiding citizens aren't going to take it anymore," he said.

"It's going to give the crooks second thoughts about carjackings and things like that. They're going to get a face full of lead," Calvey said. He introduced the bill at the request of the local National Rifle Association, and it passed with overwhelmingly support: The House agreed 83-4, the Senate 39-5.

Democratic Gov. Brad Henry signed it and said: "This act will allow law-abiding Oklahomans to protect themselves, their loved ones and their property."

Besides Oklahoma, the nine other states to sign on are Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and South Dakota, according to the NRA.

Critics say the NRA is overstating its success. Only six of those states expanded self-defense into public places, said Zach Ragbourn, a spokesman at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. There already is a presumption in law that a person does not have to retreat in their home or car, he said.

And there have been a few high-profile defeats, too.

In New Hampshire, the measure passed the legislature only narrowly and then was vetoed by Democratic Gov. John Lynch, who was joined by police and prosecutors.

Police Chief Nathaniel H. Sawyer Jr. of New Hampton, N.H., said the legislation addressed a problem that does not exist. In 26 years in law enforcement, he has never seen anyone wrongfully charged with a crime for self-defense, he said.

"I think it increases the chance for violence," said Sawyer, also the president of the New Hampshire Association of Police Chiefs. "It increases the chance of innocent people being around the violence and becoming involved in it or hurt."

The bill would have allowed a person "to use deadly force in response to non-deadly force, even in public places such as shopping malls, public streets, restaurants and churches," Lynch said when he vetoed the legislation. Existing law already gives citizens the right to protect themselves, he said.

The NRA argues that victims wind up with an unfair burden if the law, as it does in New Hampshire, requires a duty to retreat, if possible. "That does crime victims little good when they have to make a split-second decision to protect their life from violent attack by a criminal," said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's executive director.

"The only people that have anything to fear from this type of law is someone who plans on robbing, shooting or raping someone," LaPierre said.

That argument sounds good and it's winning supporters, said Florida state Rep. Dan Gelber, a critic of the law when it passed in his state last year and a former federal prosecutor.

But like Sawyer in New Hampshire, he does not see any instances now or in the past of a victim being prosecuted for failing to retreat. He sees the Florida law, and the national campaign, as an effort by the NRA to build support and keep its members riled up.

"The NRA is a victim of its own successes. No political party in Florida today is going to advance any serious gun-control agenda," said Gelber, a Democrat. "What's left is these little things which have no impact on every day life, but inspire and activate the base."

And, he argued, it gives defense attorneys a potential avenue to seek acquittal for crimes. In effect, criminals will benefit much more often than any innocent victim. "It's going to give the guy who's really looking for a fight, or does something totally irresponsible or venal, a defense he would not otherwise have."

Last week in Arizona, the state appellate court delayed the start of jury deliberations in the trial of a retired school teacher charged with second-degree murder for shooting a man on a hiking trail in May 2004. The court is deciding whether the new law applies to his claim of self-defense.

Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, who co-authored the reform plan with McCain, said: "This may be the most important vote that we cast here in the United States Senate, probably tomorrow, maybe late tonight, for our national security and for our humanity."

The real battle will be in trying to reconcile the Senate plan with the House of Representatives's version. In December the House approved a plan that would criminalize illegal immigrants and reinforce border security.

"We know that the last battle is not yet over, but that we have made a significant amount of progress," said Senator Ken Salazar, a Democrat of Mexican origin.

Senators seeking a comprehensive immigration reform want to move quickly to the bills' reconciliation stage.

"I would like to move to the conference very quickly. It's going to be a complex conference. And I think our Senate bill will provide a certain amount of momentum," said Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter said that President George W. Bush "will be better involved early than late" in the debate..

Defenders of the estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants living in the United States insisted the Senate reform plan must triumph, even though it is a watered-down version of the original plan.

"Obviously the measure that will leave the Senate isn't perfect ... but we have to move forward," Frank Sharry, director of the National Immigration Forum, said in a news teleconference.

Most of the illegal immigrants are Mexican. Bush has asked the Mexican government to do its part to keep its citizens without US visas on its side of the 3,000-kilometer (2,000-mile) common border.

Mexican President Vicente Fox, speaking Wednesday during an official visit to the United States, described the immigration issue as "complex".

"Since the beginning of my administration, the government of Mexico has promoted the establishment of a new system that regulates the movement of people across our border in a manner which is legal, safe and orderly," Fox told lawmakers in Salt Lake City, in the western state of Utah.

Fox took office in December 2000.

Sources tell TMZ the U.S. Attorney obtained the search warrant several days ago. Law enforcement went to the home of Jill Ishkanian, a partner at Sunset Photo and News, where they seized computers and other items. As of now, the official file is sealed.

Ishkanian founded Sunset Photo and News last year after leaving Us Weekly, where she worked as a reporter.

TMZ repeatedly called Sunset Photo and News for comment, but each time company reps immediately hung up the phone.

In a related development, TMZ spoke with former Hollywood madame Heidi Fleiss, who says she was contacted by officials and accused of being involved in the alleged hacking plot. The reason? Sources say Fleiss and Ishkanian are close friends. Fleiss told TMZ the allegations against her are "ridiculous."

On Capitol Hill, at least, the constitutional concern runs deep - and across party lines. "When I first saw [reports of the search], I thought: 'Wonder if the federal government needs to be reined in,' " said Rep. Zach Wamp (R) of Tennessee.

Even House Speaker Dennis Hastert weighed in, following what colleagues describe as angry phone calls from his staff to the Justice Department. "The Founding Fathers were very careful to establish in the Constitution a separation of powers to protect Americans against the tyranny of any one branch of government. They were particularly concerned about limiting the power of the Executive Branch," he said in a statement.

"Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by members of Congress," he added, noting especially the need to protect "certain legislative branch documents." "Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years."

Legal analysts locate those protections in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, known as the "Speech or Debate" clause, intended to ensure that Congress was not intimidated or controlled by the executive branch. Typically, when there's a subpoena for congressional documents, it goes to the House or Senate legal counsel to make certain that congressional interests are being protected. Otherwise, there's no protection for the executive branch rifling through committee papers, for example.

The Justice Department appeared aware of the potential problem. In a statement on Monday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the FBI had used special procedures to deal with constitutionally protected materials. "I think the executive branch intends to work with the Congress to allay those concerns."

Reportedly, those procedures included the use of a "filter team" to determine whether any of the seized documents were privileged. The team, made up of FBI agents and prosecutors who were independent of the investigation, would keep such documents from being perused. A judge was to rule on any seized documents whose status was in question, according to the affidavit.

A federal district judge in suburban Virginia issued the warrant that allowed the FBI to search Jefferson's office.

"It's an extremely complex area of constitutional law," says Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "Historically, even if the FBI had a warrant, there's no precedent for intrusion into the office of a member of Congress."

But with the approval rating for Congress at 21 percent - three points short of its all-time low - there are signs that the public isn't picking up such constitutional distinctions. Nearly half of Americans believe that most in Congress are corrupt and that corruption affects both parties equally, although they trust Democrats to handle the issue better than Republicans, according to a recent Gallup poll.

"The tone has been set by the top of the Republican Party. I've never seen a Congress as corrupt as I've seen here, and I've been in the Congress 32 years," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D) of California.

After some 16 months of gridlock, the House ethics committee, or Standards of Official Conduct, is getting back on track. The panel, which went through turmoil after initiating an investigation into then-majority leader
Tom DeLay, is under new leadership and launching investigations into Jefferson and Rep. Bob Ney (R) of Ohio, and into any cases related to convicted former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R) of California.

"Members of Congress must obey the law and cooperate fully with any criminal investigation; if they don't they will be held accountable," said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi in a statement, referring to Jefferson's refusal to turn over documents to the FBI that were subpoenaed some eight months ago.

Jefferson, for his part, said Monday that "there are two sides to every story" and that he expects to be exonerated. He has not been charged with any criminal conduct.

Staff on both sides say they expect Speaker Hastert and Ms. Pelosi to speak soon on how to protect Congress from abuse of power by the executive branch. "I expect to seek a means to restore the delicate balance of power among the branches of government that the Founders intended," Hastert said, in a statement.

Similar concerns were raised after the FBI's ABSCAM sting operation, which resulted in the conviction of seven members of Congress and five other public officials on bribery charges between 1978 and 1980. The scandal produced the first expulsion from the House since 1861.

"Like ABSCAM, the Jefferson case does seem to be an egregious case of corruption. Congress's best response would probably be to police itself more effectively, rather than claim the executive is violating 'balance of power,' " says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Boston University.

Libby "shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction," the prosecutor wrote. "Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to (the) defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether (the) defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about (Plame's) employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue."

Reached for comment late Wednesday, Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said, "Since the inquiry relates to a case in the courts, I refer you to the Office of the Special Counsel."

In the Times article, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. In 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to Niger to determine whether Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon. Wilson discounted the reports. But the allegation wound up in
President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Cheney wrote on the article, "Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an ambassador to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?"

Libby told the agents and the grand jury that he believed he had learned from reporters that Plame is married to Wilson and had forgotten that Cheney had told him that in the weeks before Wilson's article was published.

In his grand jury testimony, Libby said Cheney was so upset about Wilson's allegations that they discussed them daily after the article appeared. "He was very keen to get the truth out," Libby testified, quoting Cheney as saying, "Let's get everything out."

Libby also testified that he did not recall seeing Cheney's notes on the Wilson article.

Cheney viewed Wilson's allegations as a personal attack because the article suggested that the vice president knew that Wilson had discounted old reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.

Eight days after Wilson's article, conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified Plame and suggested that she had played a role in the CIA's decision to send Wilson to Niger.

Fitzgerald contends that Plame's status as a CIA officer was classified and that Libby was told that disclosing her identity could pose a danger.

The prosecutor wants to use Cheney's notes on the Wilson article to corroborate other evidence he has that Libby lied about outing Plame to reporters.

In a filing last week, Libby's lawyers said Fitzgerald would not call Cheney as a witness and would have a hard time getting the vice president's notes admitted into evidence at Libby's trial, which is scheduled for January.

"Contrary to defendant's assertion, the government has not represented that it does not intend to call the vice president as a witness at trial," Fitzgerald wrote. "To the best of government's counsel's recollection, the government has not commented on whether it intends to call the vice president as a witness."

The fact that Cheney's notations included a reference to Wilson's wife makes it "more likely than not" that the vice president and Libby discussed her shortly after Wilson's article was published - and not weeks or months later as Libby told the grand jury, Fitzgerald wrote.

Libby also told the grand jury that Cheney often scribbled on newspaper articles and kept them on a corner of his desk at the White House.

"He often cut out from a newspaper an article using a little penknife that he has and put it on the edge of his desk," Libby testified, according to a transcript of the grand jury proceeding that Fitzgerald attached to his filing.

Libby testified that Cheney would pull an article out of the pile later and "think about it."

A new era of globalism powered by worldwide economic growth and the Information Technology revolution followed. New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman heralded the arrival of a supposed "flat earth."

The European Community consolidated itself into the European Union and early in the 21st century its Copenhagen Expansion boosted its size from 350 million people in 15 nations to 450 million in 25 nations.

Internal security barriers within the EU were torn down and the customs, security and immigration checks on its external perimeter became a joke. France took them more seriously than most other EU nations, but control was theoretical when anyone could walk into neighboring Spain or Italy from North Africa, or even to Greece, and then simply drive or take a train into France from its fellow EU members.

The mega-terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the dramatic event that started to reverse this global trend. The United States moved fast to start tightening up its security checks and entry procedures. But over the past five years, the huge, virtually unlimited flows of North African and South Asian Muslim immigrants into the EU and of Latin American, overwhelmingly Mexican, illegal immigrants, into the United States, have continued unabated.

Islamist extremist terrorists appear to have been much more successful in taking advantage of the EU's lax security policies to penetrate major Western nations and organize terrorist cells there than have been in the United States.

This is in large part because the scale of U.S. domestic security surveillance and the amount of manpower resources available has been vastly greater in the United States than in the very small and still vastly undermanned European national domestic security services. Also, Islamist terrorists have shown a healthy respect for the toughness and alertness of Mexico's own federal security forces as well as those of the United States.

When the United States led coalition forces into Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein in March 2003, Pentagon and White House planners did not take the concept of border security seriously at all. No thought was given to it.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's deputy Paul Wolfowitz publicly dismissed then-U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki's prescient warning that hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops would be needed to maintain security in Iraq after Saddam's fall. Today, there are only 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and around 220,000 Iraqi army and security forces of doubtful reliability.

Together, they have failed to even make significant inroads on the Sunni Muslim insurgency in southern Iraq. The nation's land borders with Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran remain largely open, despite occasional U.S. large-scale military operations to interdict them.

It was tough old Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, always ready to break or outrage liberal taboos and Conventional Wisdoms, who put security fences and defensible borders back on the global strategic map.

Israeli hardline right wingers and liberal supporters of the Palestinians alike derided his concept of a security fence or barrier to cut the Gaza Strip and the Palestine Authority-controlled areas of the West Bank off from Israel in order to stop the regular attacks of Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas and Islamic Jihad that killed more than a thousand Israeli civilians, a large proportion of them women and children, in the Second Palestinian Intifada.

The fence appeared to armchair strategists as a defensive move, not manly, an admission of defeat and a departure from Israel's traditionally aggressive, reactive strategy against terror attacks. But it worked.

Successful suicide bomber attacks fell from dozens a year to single figures. Hundreds of civilian lives per year were saved. The Indian Army was so impressed by the success of the Israeli fence that it built a similar, far longer one, along the Line of Control separating Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir from the much smaller part of the state held by Pakistan since 1947-1948.

Soon the Indians were reporting that Islamist guerrilla incursions across the Line of Control had fallen by 80 percent. Now Saudi Arabia is building a similar fence to try and get its illegal immigration of 400,000 people a year from poverty-stricken neighboring Yemen under control.

Bush's new border fence is part of this new global pattern. It remains to be seen how many more nations, including, perhaps, some that will criticize his new barrier, will follow his example.

He said the report, still with the "Cold War" mentality, has exaggerated China's military power and military expenditure with ulterior motives and wantonly interfere in China's internal affairs.

"China is a peace-loving nation and has insisted on a way of peaceful development, with a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. The international community has generally acknowledged that China is an important force of promoting peace in the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large," said Liu.

He said it is natural for China, a sovereign state, to develop its national defense construction which is aimed at defending national security and safeguarding territorial integrity.

"Taiwan is an inseparable part of China's territories. The Chinese government sticks to the policy of 'peaceful reunification and one country, two systems'," said Liu.

He said the Chinese government will exert its utmost effort and show all sincerity to strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification of the motherland. However, Liu said, China will never tolerate "Taiwan independence" and will never allow any one to separate Taiwan from China in any way.

Liu said China has urged the U.S. side to stick to its commitments of adhering to the one-China policy, abiding by the three communiques between China and the U.S. and opposing to "Taiwan independence", stop selling weapons to Taiwan and not to send any wrong signal to the splittist forces of "Taiwan independence."

Hastert's office later issue a statement saying the ABC News story was "absolutely untrue."

Referring to the Justice Department denial, the statement said Hastert was not under investigation by the Justice Department, and demanded ABC News "a full retraction" of the story.

A number of lawmakers could be implicated in the corruption scandal involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy, tax evasion and wire fraud charges early this year and agreed to cooperate in the
investigation.

Abramoff was convicted and sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison in March this year.

The law is also currently being used to prosecute two lobbyists from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for obtaining and transmitting classified information they received from a U.S. Defense Department employee. The lobbyists' lawyers have filed a motion in court arguing that the law is an unconstitutional breach of the First Amendment right to free speech.

A successful prosecution in the AIPAC case could open the floodgates to indict journalists for publishing classified information leaked to them by government officials. The government would have an easier time prosecuting reporters than it does uncovering and indicting often-anonymous leakers. In fact, the threat of being prosecuted might make reporters less inclined to protect sources, thereby flushing out the leakers, or making officials more reluctant to leak in the first place.

The casual observer might conclude that reducing the amount of classified information in the media might be a good idea. But the revelation of the unconstitutional NSA domestic spying program shows that leaks by conscientious officials can, at times, have positive effects. And the public shouldn't assume that all, or even most, of the information the government shields from public view needs to be secret.

Classification can hide facts embarrassing to the U.S. government or keep information from the American public that is common knowledge among foreign governments. An example of the latter was President Jimmy Carter's revelation on television that the United States had spy satellites, which the nations of the world had long known.

Officials working for both Democratic and Republican administrations have routinely and predictably exhibited contradictory behavior toward classified information-on the one hand, regularly leaking highly classified information for political or policy gain and, on the other hand, attempting to stifle leaks of embarrassing information. The most famous case of the latter was President Nixon's team of Watergate "plumbers," which was originally set up to plug leaks.

Such schizophrenic behavior was recently on display at the confirmation hearing of General Michael Hayden, nominated for director of the CIA. General Hayden said that he would only respond to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's pointed questions about embarrassing government spying activities and prisoner interrogation methods in a committee session closed to the media and public.

But in response to one of Sen. Feinstein's questions, General Hayden eagerly took the opportunity to talk about the Iranian threat in open session. Similarly, government officials keep the cost of the overall U.S. intelligence budget classified, even though it is widely known to be about $44 billion.

Yet they have no problem leaking to the media to brag about the tripling of clandestine intelligence officers in the field or the opening of 20 percent more secret CIA stations around the world-information that actually might be of some use to terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies.

Yes, there is some information that should be classified-for example, intelligence officers in the field (or their foreign sources and contacts) could be killed if their identities were revealed. Yet the same Bush administration that may well prosecute reporters for writing about its illegal warrantless spying program conspired at the highest levels to expose the identity of a CIA field officer for political gain. The evidence seems to indicate that Vice President Dick Cheney was interested in CIA officer Valerie Plame's occupation.

But the over-classification of much government information makes officials cynical about keeping much smaller amounts of legitimately sensitive data under wraps. Thus, a massive declassification of government information would make the remaining secrets more secure and less open to political manipulation. Unfortunately, the Bush administration is classifying ever more information.

More important, in a democracy, where the supposed rulers-the people-need the maximum information possible to make good decisions, the amount of information that is withheld from the public should be minimal. And if the government cannot keep its data secret, government officials, not journalists, should be the ones who are prosecuted.

He is accused of six counts of murder in Montgomery County, just outside Washington DC, in 2002.

In 2004, he was sentenced to death by a court in neighbouring Virginia after he was convicted of one fatal shooting.

Malvo, now 21, was jailed for life in Virginia. He agreed to testify against Muhammad at the trial in Rockville, Maryland and to plead guilty.

Muhammad, dressed in a grey suit, conducted his cross-examination, appearing at times aggressive, at times gentler.

At one point, he called Malvo "son".

"I would prefer you address me by my name," Malvo replied.

Muhammad apologised, only to do it again.

Psychological battle

Muhammad questioned the younger man about his mental health, referring to his insanity plea lodged at an earlier trial.

"Who decided you was insane... How many doctors said you was insane?" Muhammad asked Malvo.

"They said I was indoctrinated," said Malvo.

Correspondents say the questioning came across as a compelling psychological battle between the two former partners.

Muhammad, who said in opening statements that he and Malvo were innocent and "I'm going to prove it", pressed the younger man for details and questioned him about contradictory statements he has made.

On Tuesday, prosecutors questioned Malvo about their relationship, apparently aiming to portray Muhammad as a predatory figure who had brainwashed Malvo and turned him into a killer.

The prosecution team say they are pursuing the second trial in case the Virginia convictions are overturned on appeal.

They also say they want to serve justice in Montgomery County, where six of the 10 killings took place in October 2002.

'Realistic possibility'

Pandemic has insisted that the title - due to be released next year - is solely about entertainment.

I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later
Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia

"Pandemic has no ties to the US government," Greg Richardson, the firm's vice president of commercial operations, told the Associated Press.

"Pandemic Studios is a private company, focusing solely on the development of interactive entertainment."

Yet Pandemic's publicist Chris Norris said its designers "always want to have a rip from the headlines".

He added: "Although a conflict doesn't necessarily have to be happening, it's realistic enough to believe that it could eventually happen."

However, on its website Pandemic lists a game called "Full Spectrum Warrior / Army Training", which it describes as a "squad-level, dismounted, light infantry training simulator created for use by the US Army".

Messes with oil

Mr Chavez and the US have been at daggers drawn for most of the eight years since he came to power in 1998.

In addition to repeatedly accusing Washington of seeking to overthrow him, Mr Chavez has greatly increased state control over its oil industry, the world's fourth largest, and responsible for 15% of US supplies.

In Mercenaries 2: World In Flames, gamers play soldiers sent to overthrow "a power-hungry tyrant [who] messes with Venezuela's oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a war zone".

Venezuelan congressman Ismael Garcia, a supporter of Mr Chavez, said the computer game was preparation work for a real invasion.

"I think the US government knows how to prepare campaigns of psychological terror so they can make things happen later," he said.