Labour peers have urged British Deputy Prime Minister and Lib-Dems leader Nick Clegg to stop opposing the Communications Data Bill, dubbed the snooper's charter by the opponents, in the wake of the Woolwich attack.

Former Labour home secretary Lord Reid and former security minister Lord West urged Clegg to drop his opposition to the legislation after a soldier was beheaded by the knife-wielding attackers in Woolwich, southeast London.

Appearing on BBC's Newsnight, Lord Reid said the police and intelligence services should have tools they need to prevent these kinds of attacks.

Two members of the FBI's elite counterterrorism unit died Friday while practicing how to quickly drop from a helicopter to a ship using a rope, the FBI announced Monday in a statement.

The statement gave few details regarding the deaths of Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, other than to say the helicopter encountered unspecified difficulties and the agents fell a "significant distance."

A law enforcement source told The Pilot the incident happened about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Virginia Beach. The official blamed bad weather for the incident and said the agents - members of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, based in Quantico - fell into the water. The official said he believed the agents died as a result of the impact rather than drowning.

A day after the IDF and the Syrian Army exchanged fire in the Golan Heights, Israel Air Force chief Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel warned that Israel must be prepared for a "surprise war" developing. Speaking at a conference in Herzliya focusing on the conclusions of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Eshel stated that "a surprise war can develop today in many forms. Isolated events can escalate very quickly and require that we are ready in hours to act in the full spectrum - and when I say the full spectrum, I mean activating the full capabilities of the Air Force." Eshel stated that, in the Second Lebanon War, the IAF had employed just a "small amount" of its capabilities, but that in the next war, the Air Force "will need to give 100 percent, in order that our operations will be very quick and powerful."

After Russia said last week that it remains committed to an arms deal with Syria to deliver the S-300 air defense system to the Assad regime, Eshel warned that the advanced platform could change the equation. "The Assad regime invested a great deal in order to achieve the best air defense capabilities that it could buy. Systems such as these are not just an operative threat, they also give a sense of security that can cause countries to do things they would not otherwise do." Eshel stated that the air defense system represented weaponry "from a completely different generation, which does not resemble what has come in the past." He added, however, that "there is no system which does not have a solution, the only question is, at what cost." Eshel stated that Syria was "changing before our eyes. If [the regime] should collapse tomorrow, we may very quickly find its large arsenal scattered and directed toward us." - Jerusalem Post

Man identified as Ibragim Todashev, who reportedly knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev as both were mixed martial-arts fighters

An FBI agent has shot and killed a Chechen man with alleged ties to deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in what was described as a "violent confrontation" in the early hours of Wednesday in Orlando, Florida.

Officials said the man, identified as 27-year-old Ibragim Todashev, was being interviewed about his friendship with Tsarnaev when he tried to attack an agent with a knife. The FBI confirmed the agent sustained "non-life threatening injuries" before shooting dead his assailant.

Law enforcement officers reportedly visited Mr Todashev at his apartment late on Tuesday night. Mr Todashev, who had been living in the US for the past five years, spent some of that time in Boston, and came into contact with Tsarnaev through the mixed martial arts community. Authorities suspect the pair of a gruesome, unsolved triple murder, committed on 11 September 2011, the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Brendan Mess, Raphael Teken, and Erik Weissman were found with their throats cut at an apartment in Waltham, Massachusetts; their bodies were covered with marijuana. Tsarnaev had previously described Mr Mess as his best friend, though the two had reportedly fallen out.

A local Miami news station, CBS 4 News, recently gushed over plans for local police to use military-style equipment for Memorial Day Weekend (video below).

Reporter Lauren Pastrana marveled at how cameras are installed throughout Miami as well as "62 light towers, twelve visual messaging boards and three watch towers."

The reporter bragged about the station's "exclusive" on the police department using a LTV, which she described as a "light tactical all-terrain vehicle, similar to the ones used in the military."

"But instead of war zones overseas, cops will use it to protect the city of Miami Beach," said Pastrona.

In April, the EU's anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove told the British media that some 500 Europeans were in Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich has said that a number of German nationals have teamed up with the foreign-backed militants in Syria.

In an exclusive interview with Germany's Der Spiegel weekly magazine, Friedrich officially confirmed for the first time that there were German-born gunmen inside Syria fighting against the government.Friedrich particularly expressed concern about calls for those Europeans who have been trained in battle inside Syria.German officials say that 20 German nationals are currently fighting in Syria. Some have reportedly even taken their wives there and live directly on the frontlines of battle.

A letter from US attorney-general confirms Barack Obama administration deliberately killed US nationals abroad.

The US has killed four of its own citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan, the Barack Obama administration has formally acknowledged.

Eric Holder, the US attorney-general, said in a letter addressed to congressional leaders on Wednesday that three of those killed were not targets of the strikes involving drones in Yemen and elsewhere.

Holder named the four dead US citizens in a letter to members of Congress one day before President Obama is scheduled to deliver an address on the use of drones.

Nothing will be left to chance - even the hint of a green protest wave.

In 2009, 475 candidates registered to run for Iran's presidency. Only four were approved by the Guardian Council - the all-powerful, vetting clerical committee. This year, no fewer than 686 registered for the upcoming June 14 elections. Eight were approved.

Among them, one won't find the two who are really controversial; former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, aka "The Shark" - essentially a pragmatic conservative - and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, adviser and right-hand man to outgoing President Mahmud Ahmadinejad are both out.

Those who will run are not exactly a stellar bunch; former vice president Mohammad Reza Aref; former national security chief Hassan Rowhani; former telecommunications minister Mohammad Gharazi; the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili; Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf; the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's foreign policy adviser Ali Akbar Velayati; secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei; and Parliament Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel.

But they do read like a who's who of ultimate Islamic Republic insiders - the so-called "principle-ists".

The head of a federal safety board says federal agents and the state fire marshal are blocking the board from investigating a deadly Central Texas fertilizer plant blast.

In a letter to a U.S. senator planning hearings into the West Fertilizer plant blast, the chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board says the board's investigation of the blast has been blocked by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the State Fire Marshal's Office. The Waco Tribune-Herald reports that the chairman asks U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer to help the board obtain evidence controlled by the ATF.

The ATF special agent in charge of the investigation tells the Austin American-Statesman that a criminal investigation comes with "certain sensitivities," while the State Fire Marshal's Office tells the paper evidence needs to be protected for now so that law enforcement produces one "clear cut" report.

The April 17 blast killed 15 people and injured about 200 others.

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the U.S. government had properly classified top secret more than 50 images of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden taken after his death and that the government did not need to release them.

The unanimous ruling by three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a request for the images by a conservative nonprofit watchdog group.

Judicial Watch sued for photographs and video from the May 2011 raid in which U.S. special forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, after more than a decade of searching.

The organization's lawsuit relied on the Freedom of Information Act, a 1966 law that guarantees public access to some government documents.

In an unsigned opinion, the appeals court accepted an assertion from President Barack Obama's administration that the images are so potent that releasing them could cause riots that would put Americans abroad at risk.

'It is undisputed that the government is withholding the images not to shield wrongdoing or avoid embarrassment, but rather to prevent the killing of Americans and violence against American interests,' the opinion said.

The court ruled that the risk of violence justifies the decision to classify the images top secret, and that the CIA may withhold the images under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act for documents that are classified.

The organization's lawsuit relied on the Freedom of Information Act, a 1966 law that guarantees public access to some government documents.