In a potential blow to his defense, Pfc. Bradley Manning has been largely denied the opportunity to present evidence about his motives for leaking documents to WikiLeaks in his upcoming trial.

Manning's defense attorney David Coombs has argued in the soldier's pretrial hearings at Fort Meade that Manning's intentions to act as a whistleblower show he had no desire to harm U.S. interests. However, military judge Col. Denise Lind on Thursday's pretrial session ruled that the defense would not be permitted to argue motive except against the specific charge that Manning knew giving information to WikiLeaks meant he was "dealing with the enemy."

More revelations emerged Friday about the secret life of Monsignor Kevin Wallin of Bridgeport, nicknamed Monsignor's Meth, who's being held in jail on charges of selling crystal methamphetamine.

A published report said the 61-year-old Monsignor Wallin was suspended from his position as pastor of St. Augustine Cathedral in 2011, because rectory personnel discovered he was cross-dressing in women's clothing at the Cathedral residence - and having sex there.

Federal investigators said after Wallin left his position as the church, he bought an "adult specialty" store in North Haven, Conn. The store was called the Land of Oz. The store reportedly sold sex toys and pornographic DVDs.

A federal indictment said investigators learned last summer that Msgr. Wallin was selling crystal meth out of an apartment in Waterbury and earning $9,000 a week.

The scandal has rocked the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bridgeport, because the charismatic Wallin was once an influential member of the inner circle here. It turns out there 's also a New York connection to this story.

U.S. officials told ABC News that at least one American has been killed in the hostage standoff at an Algerian gas plant, and the family of the deceased American has been notified.

An al Qaeda-linked group called the Masked Brigade and led by the one-eyed jihadi Mokhtar Belmokhtar raided the BP joint venture facility in In Amenas on Wednesday, taking an undetermined number of hostages from more than half a dozen nations, including at least two Americans.

On Friday, the group demanded the release of two convicted terrorists held in U.S. prisons, including the "blind sheikh" who helped plan the first attack on New York's World Trade Center, in exchange for the freedom of two American hostages, according to an African news service.

The terror group reportedly contacted a Mauritanian news service with the offer. In addition to the release of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, they demanded the release of Aifia Siddiqui, a Pakistani scientist who shot at two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2008.

The U.S. military is getting ready to send its elite troops to help in the fight against Mexico's drug lords. American special operations forces will expand their training of Mexican commando teams, teaching them to hunt cartel chieftains like they were al-Qaida extremists. It's a sign the U.S. is preparing for a long shadow war against the cartels.

The training, detailed in documents obtained by the Associated Press, will be reportedly conducted under an expanded special operations program based at the U.S. Army Northern Command's headquarters - which oversees the Pentagon's military operations on the continent. The program has previously tutored "Mexican military, intelligence, and law enforcement officials to study U.S. counterterrorist operations," according to the AP. But in a memo reportedly obtained by the news agency, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta authorized an expansion of the program that could "eventually triple from 30 [people] to 150," placing a general instead of a lieutenant colonel in charge, and creating a new headquarters.

Spire Law Group, LLP's national home owners' lawsuit, pending in the venue where the "Banksters" control their $43 trillion racketeering scheme (New York) - known as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History and identifying $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the "Banksters" and their U.S. racketeering partners and joint venturers - now pinpoints the identities of the key racketeering partners of the "Banksters" located in the highest offices of government and acting for their own self-interests.

In connection with the federal lawsuit now impending in the United States District Court in Brooklyn, New York (Case No. 12-cv-04269-JBW-RML) - involving, among other things, a request that the District Court enjoin all mortgage foreclosures by the Banksters nationwide, unless and until the entire $43 trillion is repaid to a court-appointed receiver - Plaintiffs now establish the location of the $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money in a racketeering enterprise participated in by the following individuals (without limitation): Attorney General Holder acting in his individual capacity, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, the brother in law of Defendant California Attorney General Kamala Harris (both acting in their individual capacities), Jon Corzine (former New Jersey Governor), Robert Rubin (former Treasury Secretary and Bankster), Timothy Geitner, Treasury Secretary (acting in his individual capacity), Vikram Pandit (recently resigned and disgraced Chairman of the Board of Citigroup), Valerie Jarrett (a Senior White House Advisor), Anita Dunn (a former "communications director" for the Obama Administration), Robert Bauer (husband of Anita Dunn and Chief Legal Counsel for the Obama Re-election Campaign), as well as the "Banksters" themselves, and their affiliates and conduits. The lawsuit alleges serial violations of the United States Patriot Act, the Policy of Embargo Against Iran and Countries Hostile to the Foreign Policy of the United States, and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (commonly known as the RICO statute) and other State and Federal laws.

In pre-dawn darkness, a ­Toyota Land Cruiser skidded off a bridge in North Africa in the spring, plunging into the Niger River. When rescuers arrived, they found the bodies of three U.S. Army commandos - alongside three dead women.

What the men were doing in the impoverished country of Mali, and why they were still there a month after the United States suspended military relations with its government, is at the crux of a mystery that officials have not fully explained even 10 weeks later.

At the very least, the April 20 accident exposed a team of Special Operations forces that had been working for months in Mali, a Saharan country racked by civil war and a rising Islamist insurgency. More broadly, the crash has provided a rare glimpse of elite U.S. commando units in North Africa, where they have been secretly engaged in counterterrorism actions against al-Qaeda affiliates.

The Obama administration has not publicly acknowledged the existence of the missions, although it has spoken in general about plans to rely on Special Operations forces as a cornerstone of its global counterterrorism strategy. In recent years, the Pentagon has swelled the ranks and resources of the Special Operations Command, which includes such units as the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force, even as the overall number of U.S. troops is shrinking.

Attorney General Eric Holder and his Department of Justice have asked a federal court to indefinitely delay a lawsuit brought by watchdog group Judicial Watch. The lawsuit seeks the enforcement of open records requests relating to Operation Fast and Furious, as required by law.

Judicial Watch had filed, on June 22, 2012, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious and "specifically [a]ll records subject to the claim of executive privilege invoked by President Barack Obama on or about June 20, 2012."

The administration has refused to comply with Judicial Watch's FOIA request, and in mid-September the group filed a lawsuit challenging Holder's denial. That lawsuit remains ongoing but within the past week President Barack Obama's administration filed what's called a "motion to stay" the suit. Such a motion is something that if granted would delay the lawsuit indefinitely.

After the end of the Cold War there was a widespread perception both in the West and Russia that the time of ideological animosity and human rights problems had passed into history. Nevertheless, the adoption of the Magnitsky Act, passed recently by the US Congress and by the EU in 2011, sees human rights used as a weapon in international relations once again.

The proponents of the Magnitsky Act believe that it is supposed to replace the Jackson-Vanik amendment adopted by the US in 1974 in order to punish the then Soviet Union for forbidding Jewish emigration. But the two are not practically comparable.

The Jackson-Venik amendment covered the whole of the USSR and affected the nationwide economy while the Magnitsky Act includes a list of about 60 officials, accused of being involved in the imprisonment and death of anti-corruption whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky, who are banned from entering the US and the EU and whose assets are frozen.

Although the act only affects a tiny minority of officials, it has attracted public attention in the country, both for and against. A survey in November by the Levada Center in Moscow found that 39 percent of Russians agreed with the law, while 14 percent were opposed to it, and 48 percent said they were undecided.

The NSA has turned over documents on the controversial "Perfect Citizen" program to EPIC in response to a FOIA request. "Perfect Citizen" is an NSA program that monitors private networks in the United States. The redacted documents obtained from the federal agency by EPIC state that "[t]he prevention of a loss due to a cyber or physical attack [on Sensitive Control Systems, like large-scale utilities], or recovery of operational capability after such an event, is crucial to the continuity of the [Department of Defense] , the [Intelligence Community], and the operation of SIGNIT systems." The NSA claims that Perfect Citizen is merely a research and development program. The documents obtained by EPIC suggest that the program is operational.

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as 'attack', 'Al Qaeda', 'terrorism' and 'dirty bomb' alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like 'pork', 'cloud', 'team' and 'Mexico'.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder' used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that 'reflect adversely' on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center - a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as 'broad, vague and ambiguous'.