Two Justice Department memos describing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) illegal warrantless wiretapping program were made public late Friday as part of an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

The memos, a May 2004 memo authored by the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith and a November 2001 memo from John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, are most notable for what they don’t reveal. The memos are heavily redacted.

A prominent Republican fund-raiser was charged Wednesday in a federal grand jury indictment with orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The fund-raiser, Timothy Durham, 48, was arrested early in the morning at his West Hollywood home and charged with 12 counts of securities and wire fraud in federal court here.

Prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu is being heavily criticised in Israel for his blatant exploitation of the murder of five members of one family (including three children) at the Itamar settlement near Nablus.

Particularly egregious has been Netanyahu's demand that president Mahmoud Abbas personally appear on Palestinian radio and television to condemn the killings, although Abbas had issued an unusually strong statement as soon as he heard of the tragedy.

Yucca Mountain is still breathing. It's been 24 long years since Congress first designated the desert locale in southern Nevada as the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste.

While opponents have gained the upper hand in trying to block the project in recent years — in 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table" — a group of House Republicans is fighting back. They want to revive the site as part of a broader plan that calls for building 200 new nuclear plants by 2030.