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SANTA FE – Lawsuit claims about young female sex slaves allegedly kept by billionaire investor Jeffrey Epstein and offered to a worldwide list of the rich and famous have reached New Mexico. In a new court filing in Florida, plaintiffs’ lawyers maintain that a woman identified as Jane Doe No. 3, said to have been coerced into Epstein’s camp when she was 15 years old, was frequently sexually abused by Epstein “not only in West Palm Beach (Fla.), but also in New York, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, in international airspace on … Epstein’s private planes, and elsewhere.” Epstein...

Thus The Economist sums up what it calls "a new blow to an increasingly isolated White House," although, it adds, he "may have outlived his usefulness" (especially after the 2006 GOP drubbing) Despite the pledge of undying friendship from a "grim-faced" President Bush, "Rove leaves the White House in anything but victory," opines Adam Nagourney at the New York Times. His legendary reputation was seriously diminished by the Republican defeat in the 2006 midterm elections, and has been eroded almost every day since then, . . .

The Kremlin warned Monday of possible retaliation against the United States for sanctions imposed on two major companies in the Russian defense industry. "We cannot rule out certain negative consequences for bilateral relations" between Russia and the United States, presidential administration spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. "This was an unfriendly act toward Russia, and it was not done in a spirit of cooperation." Rosoboronexport chief Sergei Chemezov suggested Monday that a proposed deal for U.S. companies to deliver up to $1 billion in Russian military hardware to Afghanistan and Iraq could be jeopardized by the sanctions, Interfax reported. Meanwhile in...

The Obama administration's recent lifting of sanctions against Russia's state arms exporter could boost orders for Russian aircraft from a somewhat-unexpected customer: the U.S. military. As part of its effort to equip the militaries of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, the Pentagon has in recent years been snapping up helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft from the arsenals of its former Cold War rivals, including Russia. The goal is to help the three countries build air forces that are rugged, affordable and easy to operate. Washington sanctioned Rosoboronexport, Russia's state arms dealer, in 2006 for its dealings with Iran, and lifted those restrictions...

MOSCOW, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Russian arms export corporation Rosoboronexport signed a contract with the U.S. Army Forces Command on supplying 21 Mi-17V5 multipurpose helicopters to Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Service of Military-Technical Cooperation said on Friday. The United States and Russia have been in talks for more than a year on the deal to provide the much-needed vehicles for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, RIA Novosti reported. The cost of one helicopter has been agreed earlier at 17.5 million U.S. dollars. The first helicopters will be sent to Afghanistan in October 2011, said the spokesman. Besides,...

CARACAS, Venezuela - U.S. missionaries accused by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of espionage have been forced from their remote outposts among jungle tribes by a government order, the final pair leaving Thursday after years of evangelical work. The New Tribes Mission flew those two out of the rain forest to regroup with other missionaries in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz. There they will decide what to do next: leave the country or continue with a legal battle seeking to overturn the government's order to expel them from indigenous areas by Sunday. Most of the group's missionaries are Americans. Since...

New details tonight about a secret Pentagon database used to monitor anti-war protests and activists. Recently-disclosed documents reveal that some of the surveillance targets include an organization with ties to the Central Coast. Secret Pentagon documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union provide details of how the organization called "Veterans for Peace" was considered a threat. Every Sunday for the past three years, members of the Santa Barbara Chapter of Veterans for Peace place a cross in the sand near Stearns Wharf for every American soldier killed in Iraq. First started in Santa Barbara, the "Arlington West" display has...

So Peg Lautenschlager wants to take over the Chai Vang case. We wish the Wisconsin attorney general good luck. She'll need it. We're inclined to agree with the cynics who think this is more about politics than prosecutorial discretion. After all, it's certainly no coincidence that Lautenschlager will be up for re-election in 2006. It's also important to note that Lautenschlager is trying to live down a DWI conviction. Adding insult to injury, she was in a state-owned vehicle earlier this year when she was pulled over and refused to submit to a sobriety test. Clearly, a victory in the...

Brace yourself. In the United Nations-brokered farce known as the “cessation of hostilities in Lebanon,” we may now be heading for the moment in which Secretary-General Kofi Annan jets to Beirut to crown as the heirs of Lebanon the hijackers of the Cedar Revolution — the terrorists of Hezbollah. Not that the U.N. has exactly expressed it that way. Annan’s office as of Friday afternoon would confirm only that Annan “will likely go to the region in the weeks ahead.” Israeli radio has been reporting that Annan will begin a Middle East tour on Monday in Lebanon, and go from...

Missing Iranian general’s family suspects Israel Family of Ali Reza Asgari, Iran’s former deputy defense minister who disappeared from Turkey last month, visits Turkish embassy in Tehran demanding information on his whereabouts. Asgari’s wife rejects reports he defected to West, smuggled family out of Iran: ‘We are here, those are our enemies lies’ The family of Ali Reza Asgari , the Iranian general and former deputy defense minister who disappeared from Turkey last month, snubbed recent newspaper reports claiming he defected to the West and insisted instead that he was kidnapped by foreign agents. His wife Ziba Asgari, 46, contended...

While helping Iraqi forces to break the Islamic State's siege of Amerli, the US Air Force supported a deadly Shia militia that is responsible for killing hundreds of US soldiers. The Shia militia, known as Asaib al Haq, or the League of the Righteous, has also captured and executed US soldiers and British citizens in the past. Iraqi forces, supported by "paramilitary forces" such as the League of the Righteous, advanced on Amerli late last week and reached the town by Aug. 31, The Washington Post reported. By Sept. 1, the siege, which lasted for more than two months, was...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A top special operations officer from Lebanon's Iranian-backed militia Hezbollah has been captured in Iraq, where U.S. officials say he played a key role in a January attack that killed five Americans. Ali Mussa Daqduq, an explosives expert, was captured in March in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where he was helping train and lead Shiite militias fighting coalition troops, U.S. intelligence officials told CNN. Daqduq pretended to be deaf and mute when captured, and his identity was not known for weeks, the officials said. Once uncovered, however, they said he began to talk, and...

A UNITED State Federal judge ordered the detention on Monday of an Ethiopian-born U.S. citizen who was arrested at Detroit's airport last week for carrying nearly $79,000 in cash and articles on suitcase bombs and the Sept. 11 attacks. Sisayehiticha Dinssa, 34, was arrested on Nov. 14 on arrival in Detroit after a dog smelled narcotics on his cash, according to federal prosecutors who had appealed a decision for him to be released on bond as a threat and a flight risk. Dinssa is charged with failing to declare he was bringing more than $10,000 into the United States, a...

Airport Arrest Turns Up Nuclear Info The Associated Press Thursday, November 16, 2006; 12:54 PM DETROIT -- A man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after officials say they found him carrying nearly $79,000 in cash and a laptop computer containing information about nuclear materials and cyanide. Sisayehiticha Dinssa, an unemployed U.S. citizen, was arrested Tuesday after a dog caught the scent of narcotics on cash he was carrying, according to an affidavit filed in court. When agents asked him if he had any cash to declare, he said he had $18,000, authorities said. But when agents checked his luggage,...

A Canadian man accused of plotting a terrorist attack on New York is being held in custody overseas, an FBI source knowledgeable about the investigation said Friday. This suspect is one of eight people — three of them in custody — who, investigators say, were planning to bomb heavily used commuter tunnels leading to Manhattan with the aim of flooding the financial district at the south end of the island. A version of the alleged plot was revealed Friday morning in a New York daily newspaper, prompting the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security to hold...

Assem Hammoud, 31, the architect of a plan to bomb New York tunnels, was trained and directed by Al Qaida to strike by the end of this year, U.S. and Lebanese officials said. "Security forces were able to track e-mails and conversations on an extremist Islamic website used to recruit terrorists," the Lebanese Internal Security Forces said in a statement. Hammoud, nicknamed the "Andalusian prince" in an apparent reference to Islamic emirs who once ruled Spain, was trained in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein Hilwe near Sidon, the ISF statement said. Ein Hilwe has long been a hotbed of...

UNITED NATIONS - The United States and France reached agreement Saturday on a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at ending the fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said. Bolton refused to comment on the text, but an official with knowledge of the document said the draft calls for a “full cessation of violence” between Israel and Hezbollah, but would allow Israel the right to launch strikes if Hezbollah attacks it.

JERUSALEM -- In their first comment about the fate of two soldiers whose capture triggered a month long war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas last summer, Israeli officials said yesterday the two were seriously wounded -- raising the prospect they may no longer be alive.

Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the two Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hizbullah last summer, have been transferred to Iran, London-based Arab language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Sunday. According to the report, the captives were transferred to Iran shortly after the kidnapping in a special operation overseen by a senior Revolutionary Guard commander. A source at the headquarters of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told the newspaper that the planned release of an Iranian prisoner held In Germany could be related to a possible deal regarding the captives. He claimed that as part of this German-Iranian deal, Germany would...

A key conviction tied to the plot to abduct Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer just got tossed by a state appeals court. A three-judge panel on Tuesday vacated the domestic terrorism-related convictions of Joseph Morrison, ruling that jurors in his case were misinstructed and that prosecutors leaned on a misreading of Michigan's antiterrorism law, per the New York Times. Morrison, linked by prosecutors to the Wolverine Watchmen militia and sentenced to four to 20 years behind bars, was found guilty of providing material support for an act of terrorism and illegal gang membership. The court said the state wrongly used kidnapping...