Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts.

As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.

Even as the

the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

"This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century," says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. "If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment.

… phone tracking has become a regular feature in criminal investigations. It comes in two forms: police obtaining retrospective data kept by mobile providers for their own billing purposes that may not be very detailed, or prospective data that reveals the minute-by-minute location of a handset or mobile device.

Obtaining location details is now "commonplace," says

The United States plans by 2015 to field ballistic missile interceptors in Romania.

The U.S. State Department confirmed the statement by Romanian President Traian Basescu that his nation would become part of

Iraq has ordered about 250 former and current employees of Blackwater Worldwide to leave the country within seven days or face having their visas pulled.

The order comes in the wake of a U.S. judge dismissing criminal charges against five Blackwater guards who were accused in the September 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.

The shooting inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said on Wednesday the order targets security contractors who worked for Blackwater at the time of the shootout. He said all "concerned parties" were notified of the order three days ago.

Sen. Christopher S. Bond regularly railed against President Obama's economic stimulus plan as irresponsible spending that would drive up the national debt. But behind the scenes, the Missouri Republican quietly sought more than $50 million from a federal agency for two projects in his state.

Mr. Bond was not alone. More than a dozen Republican lawmakers, while denouncing the stimulus to the media and their constituents, privately sent letters to just one of the federal government's many agencies seeking stimulus money for home-state pork projects.

The letters to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, expose the gulf between lawmakers' public criticism of the overall stimulus package and their private lobbying for projects close to home.

U.S. soldier 'waterboarded his own daughter, 4, because she couldn't recite alphabet'

A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.

Space shuttle Endeavour roars off Launch Pad 39A on its STS-130 mission to deliver Tranquility and cupola to the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann

STS-131: March 18, 2010, Discovery

STS-132:   May 14, 2010, Atlantis

STS-134:  July 29, 2010, Endeavour

STS-133: Sept 16, 2010, Discovery

The goal … is to inject some machismo into their ministries — and into the image of Jesus — in the hope of making Christianity more appealing. “Compassion and love — we agree with all that stuff, too,” said Brandon Beals, 37, the lead pastor at Canyon Creek Church outside of Seattle. “But what led me to find Christ was that Jesus was a fighter."

Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers

'She insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt'

A t-shirt not to be confused with the soon to-be-released Girl Buried in an Obama t-shirt t-shirt. Which will be Obamacare, rev. 1.7.1

That's quite a plan, Mr. Obama.  Apart from the feel-good aura of self-referentiality, what, exactly, are you proud of?  After refusing to stand for anything on the health care bill, you now stand up proudly and say this?  Your performance on health care to date mocks this woman's death.

You stood in front of the House Republicans and said you were not an ideologue.  "I'm not!" you said.  Republicans don't believe this, of course, but remember: this is a group of people who, if told that their "base" was growing restless because gravity was not in the Bible, and that the gub'mint was teachin' their kids 'bout this so-called "gravity" as if it were a fact, not a theory, well, this group of people that Obama was talking to that night would thenceforth not believe in gravity, or at least would find it troubling that their nation's children were learning only one side of the "gravity" story.  But Obama did tell the truth.

Mr. Obama, though the Republicans will never acknowledge it, you were being absolutely truthful, a rare moment that might otherwise be applauded in less dire contexts, where the prospects of such a lack of conviction might have less deadly consequences.  The President told us the truth!

Yes, sir, you are not an ideologue.  You appear to care about nothing, and any appearance made by the word care within any Obama namespace ought

The Russian military allegedly dumped nuclear waste into the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s …

The partly enclosed Baltic Sea is known as one of the most polluted seas in the world.

But now it seems it was also used as a dumping ground for Russian nuclear waste and chemical weapons.

Radioactive material from a military base in Latvia is thought to have been thrown into Swedish waters.

According to a report on Swedish television, Russian boats sailed out at night, to dump barrels of radioactive material, from a military base in Latvia, into Swedish waters.

Ten American missionaries arrested in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after last month's earthquake were charged today with child kidnapping and criminal association.

The group, most of whom are members of an Idaho-based church group, were sent back to jail today after a closed court hearing in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

Their lawyer, Edwin Coq, said that the judge had found sufficient evidence to file charges against his clients, who were arrested last Friday at Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic while trying to take the busload of ­children out of the country without documents or permission.

[...]More