Ankara, Turkey - In the second deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in five months, a suicide bomber struck the American Embassy in Ankara on Friday, killing a Turkish security guard in what the White House described as a terrorist attack.

Washington immediately warned Americans to stay away from all U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey and to be wary in large crowds.

Turkish officials said the bombing was linked to leftist domestic militants.

The attack drew condemnation from Turkey, the U.S., Britain and other nations and officials from both Turkey and the U.S. pledged to work together to fight terrorism.

"We strongly condemn what was a suicide attack against our embassy in Ankara, which took place at the embassy's outer security perimeter," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

"A suicide bombing on the perimeter of an embassy is by definition an act of terror," he said. "It is a terrorist attack."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said police believe the bomber was connected to a domestic leftist militant group. Carney, however, said the motive for the attack and who was behind it was not known.

A Turkish TV journalist was seriously wounded in the 1:15 p.m. blast in the Turkish capital, and two other guards had lighter wounds, officials said.

The state-run Anadolu Agency identified the bomber as Ecevit Sanli. It said the 40-year-old Turkish man was a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, which has claimed responsibility for assassinations and bombings since the 1970s.

The group has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States but had been relatively quiet in recent years.

Washington - Hillary Rodham Clinton formally resigned Friday as America's 67th secretary of state, capping a four-year tenure that saw her shatter records for the number of countries visited.

In a letter sent to President Barack Obama shortly before she was to leave the State Department for the last time in her official capacity, Clinton thanked her former foe for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination for the opportunity to serve in his administration. Clinton said it had been an honor to be part of his Cabinet.

"I am more convinced than ever in the strength and staying power of America's global leadership and our capacity to be a force for good in the world," she said in the letter.

Her resignation will be effective on the swearing-in of her successor, John Kerry, who was to take the oath of office in a private ceremony later Friday.

Clinton pushed through a throng of American foreign service workers who clamored for handshakes and smartphone photos with her and gave an emotional goodbye speech.

She told them to continue to "serve the nation we all love, to understand the challenges, the threats and the opportunities that the United States faces and to work with all our heart and all of our might to make sure that America is secure, that our interests are promoted and our values are respected."

U.S. Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, a 30-year veteran of the agency that protects American presidents and visiting dignitaries, will retire on Feb. 22, according to Brian Leary, a spokesman.

Sullivan, who began his Secret Service career in 1983, has been its director since 2006, when he was promoted from assistant director. He will retire as the third-longest-serving head of the agency, Leary said yesterday.

"From securing large events such as presidential inaugurations to safeguarding our financial system, the men and women of the agency perform their mission with professionalism and dedication," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "That is a testament to Mark and his steadfast leadership, which will be missed."

Sullivan, a Massachusetts native, joined the Secret Service as a special agent in the Detroit Field Office and rose through the ranks to lead the agency's more than 150 offices around the world. In 1991, Sullivan began work in the Presidential Protective Division, where he served for four years, according to his biography on the agency's website.

"Mark Sullivan epitomizes the term 'public service,' and has devoted his life to the safety of our First Families, our nation's leaders, and the public at large," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a statement. "I am deeply grateful for his contributions."

The lure of bonus pay and extra vacation time perhaps drove border patrol agents in western New York to arrest hundreds of people that were in the country legally, a new report finds.

Over five years, Border guards patrolling Rochester's bus and train stations arrested about 300 people who weren't suspected of any other crime, but weren't carrying complete citizenship or immigration papers, according to a report released this week by the immigrant rights group Families for Freedom and the New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic.

"The border patrol thinks that you can be expected to carry your passport at all times," said NYU School of Law Professor Nancy Morawetz, a co-author of the report. "You can put the pieces together and see the encouragement of reckless arrests -- arresting first and asking questions later."

The Rochester agents reported to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol sector in Buffalo, where the workplace culture emphasized making high numbers of arrests, researchers said.

In an exclusive interview with the Voice of Russia, Bruce Gagnon shares little known facts about the militarization of space by the United States, the development of first strike space drones and the foundation of the US Military Industrial Complex by Nazi scientists bent on victory in World War III. If you thought missile defense and drones were bad, you haven't heard anything yet.

Robles: According to your organization the US Space Command has publicly stated they intent to control space in order to protect US interests and investments. Is space now US territory?

Gagnon: Well, indeed the United States likes to believe that it is its own space, and particularly the Space Command, who on their headquarters building in Colorado Springs, just above the doorway they have their logo that reads "Master of Space". So, I think that it is quite evident that the Space Command does indeed view space as US territory that must be controlled because they clearly understand that all warfare on the earth today is coordinated by space technology and that whoever essentially controls space will control the planet below, in this case on behalf I believe of corporate globalization. And so the Space Command in our thinking has become the military arm of corporate globalization.

And so today the US is developing a whole host of technologies to allow it to fight war from space, through space and in space, controlling not only the Earth but also the pathway on and off the planet Earth, the pathway to other planetary bodies as resources are discovered on other planets: magnesium, cobalt, uranium, gold, water etc.

In a congressional study done back in the 1980s, the Congress gave the Pentagon the mandate to develop the technologies to control the pathway on and off the planet Earth. So, the Space Command sees its role in a very-very robust kind of way.

Ominously but unsurprisingly, the U.S. military's Africa Command wants to increase its footprint in northwest Africa. What began as low-profile assistance to France's campaign to wrest control of northern Mali (a former colony) from unwelcome jihadists could end up becoming something more.

The Washington Post reports that Africom "is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa [probably Niger] so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region." But before that word "surveillance" can bring a sigh of relief, the Post adds, "For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens."

Meanwhile Bloomberg, citing American military officials, says Niger and the U.S. government have "reached an agreement allowing American military personnel to be stationed in the West African country and enabling them to take on Islamist militants in neighboring Mali, according to U.S. officials.... No decision has been made to station the drones."

The irony is that surveillance drones could become the reason the "threat worsens," and could provide the pretext to use drones armed with Hellfire missiles - the same kind used over 400 times in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, killing hundreds of noncombatants. Moving from surveillance to lethal strikes would be a boost for jihadist recruiters.

They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and while the Senate Armed Services Committee is hardly a war zone, it is proving to be the scene of a battlefield conversion for Chuck Hagel.

Obama's nominee for secretary of defense, who has spent the past eight years an avowed critic of what he saw as the wasteful militarism of the last Republican president, sounded at his confirmation hearing in Thursday like a tried-and-true neoconservative. He assured his former Senate colleagues that when it comes to Iran, "all options are on the table." "My policy is one of prevention, and not containment," Hagel said. This is quite a different tone for a man who said only a few years ago that he supported "unconditional and comprehensive talks" with the Islamic Republic.

If this rate continues, this administration will deport as many people as were from 1892 to 1997 combined.

At current rates, deportations enforced under the Obama presidency are set to hit 2 million by 2014 according to a new report from the University of California-Merced. Findings highlight that, if current deportation rates continue, nearly as many people will have been deported under this administration than during the entirety of years between 1892 and 1997. These are striking statistics to consider while Congress debates the president's commitment to immigration enforcement.

The report notes that under Obama, the deportation of convicted criminals has been a focus and a point of pride for the administration. However, as immigrant justice advocates have often stressed, the report points out that "many of these criminal deportees are deported after a minor criminal conviction":

In 2011, 188,382 people were deported on criminal grounds. Nearly a quarter were deported after a drug conviction, another 23% for traffic crimes, and one in five for immigration crimes. The DHS does not get very specific about these convictions, but we do know that drug crimes include marijuana possession; traffic crimes include speeding; and immigration crimes include illegal entry and re-entry.

It is likely that large numbers of people apprehended through the Criminal Alien Program are minor drug offenders and immigration offenders. Additionally, it is likely that the Criminal Alien Program is tearing apart families. One study found that, on average, people deported after being convicted of a crime had lived 14 years in the United States.

A letter allegedly written by a Dominican woman claims that Sen. Bob Menendez had sexual relations with prostitutes, attended sex parties, and may have even slept with minors.

In an e-mail written nine months ago but published Jan. 31 by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a young Dominican woman claims she slept with 59-year-old Menendez at a number of sex parties organized in the Dominican Republic by his campaign donor, Dr. Salomon Melgen. She claims she had sex with the senator "three times at least" in 2009.

"The first one in February, and then in May and June. I recall his visit in June so well because that month was my 17th birthday," allegedly wrote the prostitute.

"That senator also likes the youngest and newest girls," the woman added. "In the beginning he seemed so serious, because he never spoke to anyone, but he is just like the others and has just about the same tastes as the doctor, very refined. I think they were taking us more often to get us checked [medically] because of him."

Those who translated the letter from Spanish to English say the writing indicates that the woman could be very young and unsophisticated and may indeed have been a minor when she started engaging in sexual intercourse with Menendez.

A new report by the federal monitor overseeing the Oakland Police Department officers pointed their weapons at a sleeping baby while executing a search warrant.

"Two officers pointed their firearms at a sleeping 19-month-old child who, of course, posed no immediate threat to the officers or others," said the Jan. 30 report by Robert Warsaw. "The crime being investigated, according to the reports, involved a misdemeanor offense."

The report marked a decrease in the level of compliance with the department's Negotiated Settlement Agreement for the second consecutive quarter, the East Bay Express reported, and it came a week after Mayor Jean Quan touted the hiring of former New York and Los Angeles Police Commissioner William Bratton as a consultant, an expenditure of $250,000 by saying, "Sometimes, you need an outside eye."