AMONG the stories and rumours prompted by Edward J Snowden’s leaking of classified material — whistleblowing or treason, depending on where you stand — are suggestions that the revelations may actually lead to a policy change concerning the extent to which private companies carry out intelligence gathering and analysis in the United States.

The gunmen who attacked Mumbai set out by boat from Pakistan’s port of Karachi, a top police official said, as the US secretary of state headed today to India in Washington’s efforts to defuse tension between the two nuclear rivals.

OSAMA bin Laden, deeply isolated and likely to be somewhere near the rugged Afghanistan-Pakistan border, has been forced to devote much of his energy to his own security while his al-Qaida terror network remains resilient, CIA director Michael Hayden said.

Afghanistan’s Defence Ministry denied an assertion by the top US intelligence official that only 30% of the country is under the control of President Hamid Karzai’s government.

A coalition of Taliban militants in Pakistan declared an "indefinite" ceasefire today in fighting against Pakistani security forces.

George Bush gently nudged authoritarian Arab allies to satisfy frustrated desires for democracy in the Middle East, saving his harshest criticism for Iran, branding it “the world’s leading state-sponsor of terror”.

A US intelligence chief says waterboarding “would be torture” if used against him or if someone under interrogation was actually taking water into their lungs.

Al Qaida is stepping up its efforts to sneak terror operatives into the US and has acquired most of the capabilities it needs to strike, according to a new intelligence assessment.

The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba and move terror suspects from there to military prisons on US soil, it emerged last night..

Pakistan today rejected the US intelligence chief’s claims that Osama bin Laden and his deputy are hiding in the country, and that al-Qaida is setting up camps near the border with Afghanistan.

The White House announced a shuffling of US military leaders in the Iraq war today as Congress’ new Democratic chiefs criticised plans president George W Bush is considering to boost US troop strength in the war zone.

The White House today announced a shuffling of US military leaders in the Iraq war today as Congress' new Democratic chiefs criticised plans President George W Bush is considering to boost US troop strength in the war zone.

US president George Bush today nominated intelligence veteran, former National Security Agency Director Mike McConnell, to be the second US national intelligence director.