Justin Rood Reports:
 A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.
Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror.
The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.
A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.
A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity -- "Usama bin Laden" and "Osama bin Laden" for the al Qaeda chief, for example.
In addition to the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists -- abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no known tie to an international terrorist group.Combined, the NCTC and FBI compendia comprise the watch list used by federal ...   more »

 Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is expected to finalise a deal on buying up to nine Russian submarines during a visit here later this month, a Russian newspaper reported on Thursday.
Caracas has already ordered five 636-type diesel submarines and four of a new model of diesel submarine, the 677E Amur, the Kommersant broadsheet said, quoting unnamed sources in the ship-building and arms export sectors.
Chavez may have to settle for the older 636 submarines for the time being as the new 677E Amur has not yet been presented to Russia's own navy, a source at the arms export agency Rosoboronexport said.
"To start off with they were insisting on only the Amurs but were then persuaded to take the 636 vessels," the source told Kommersant.
The paper said Chavez planned to visit Russia on June 29, less than a year after a visit last July, the paper said.
If it goes ahead, the deal is likely to become a "new irritant in relations between Moscow and Washington," the paper commented.
Venezuela has become a major buyer of Russian arms in recent years, angering the United States, which worries about Chavez's anti-American tone.
Since 2005 Caracas has spent 3.4 billion dollars ...   more »

A Middle East expert and best-selling author says the increasingly cozy relationship between Iran and Russia continues to point to a 2,500-year-old prophecy.
Recently Joel Rosenberg released the DVD version of his best-selling book Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future, which features interviews with Israeli leaders such as former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the crisis in the Middle East and focuses on the threat now posed by Iran. The author is hopeful the DVD will make people aware of a relationship developing between Iran and Russia that has him deeply concerned.
Rosenberg says that the Book of Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39, discuss a military alliance between Gog, or Russia, and Persia, now known as Iran. Scripture says the two entities will form an alliance with a group of other Middle Eastern countries in the last days to attack Israel. That alliance, says Rosenberg, has never happened until now.
"As I note in the film, in the 2,500 years since Ezekiel wrote that prophecy, Russia and Iran have never had an alliance like what Ezekiel described," he explains. "Now, just in the last few years, this alliance is rapidly emerging." In an ...   more »