WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration denied Republican accusations of a cover-up in last year’s deadly attack in Libya, moving on Friday to defuse a renewed political controversy after a news report said memos on the incident were edited to omit references to a CIA warning of an al Qaeda threat.

ABC News reported emails between the White House, State Department and intelligence agencies about the Benghazi attack went through 12 extensive revisions and were scrubbed clean of warnings about a militant threat.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration denied Republican accusations of a cover-up in last year’s deadly attack in Libya, moving on Friday to defuse a renewed political controversy after a news report said memos on the incident were edited to omit references to a CIA warning of an al Qaeda threat.

ABC News reported emails between the White House, State Department and intelligence agencies about the Benghazi attack went through 12 extensive revisions and were scrubbed clean of warnings about a militant threat.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, May 9 (Reuters) – U.S. authorities on
Thursday announced visa fraud charges against a Tunisian man who
prosecutors said had met with a key figure in an alleged plot to
blow up a railroad line in Canada that carries Amtrak trains
between Toronto and New York.

In a letter filed in federal court in New York, prosecutors
said the man, Ahmed Abassi, 26, who had lived in Canada, was
recorded by a U.S. undercover agent discussing various “proposed
terrorist plots” with Chiheb Esseghaier, another Tunisian
suspect. Esseghaier is now being held by Canadian authorities.

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration may seek to end a long-running debate over Internet wiretaps with proposed legislation that would enable law-enforcement agencies to tap into many types of Internet communications, U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter said.

The proposal is aimed at getting past the technical and legal obstacles that make it difficult for the FBI and other agencies with court orders to check so-called voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) services such as those offered by Microsoft Corp’s Skype.

WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) – The regulator of the Vatican
bank on Tuesday signed an information-sharing pact with the U.S.
agency that tracks suspicious financial transactions, part of an
effort by the scandal-ridden bank to improve its international
image.

The bank, which manages money mostly for dioceses and
religious institutions and is known as the Institute for Works
of Religion (IOR), has traditionally been isolated from the
international regulatory system.

BOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Investigators believe Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, likely made the bombs they are suspected of setting off at last month’s Boston Marathon in Tamerlan’s home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, law enforcement officials said on Friday.

FBI agents have been questioning Tamerlan’s wife, Katherine Russell, and other witnesses for days to try to piece together exactly how and where the devices were made and what people knew about the brothers’ beliefs and plans.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of names on a highly classified U.S. central database used to track suspected terrorists has jumped to 875,000 from 540,000 only five years ago, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said.

Among those was suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose name was added in 2011. The increase in names is due in part to security agencies using the system more in the wake of the failed 2009 attack on a plane by “underpants bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Detroit.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Official watchdogs for the U.S. intelligence community have launched a review of how information was shared before the Boston Marathon bombing and how it can be improved.

“We want to see, is there, in fact, additional protocols and procedures that could be put in place that would further improve and enhance our ability to detect a potential attack,” President Barack Obama said at a news conference on Tuesday.

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) – The two brothers
suspected of carrying out last week’s deadly Boston Marathon
bombing decided, after the FBI released photos of them, to drive
to Manhattan and detonate more explosives in Times Square, New
York City officials said on Thursday.

Their plan unraveled when they realized a Mercedes sport
utility vehicle they had hijacked on April 18, three days after
the Boston bombing, did not have enough gasoline for the
journey, said New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

WASHINGTON April 25 (Reuters) – Investigators believe one of
two suspects charged in Canada with plotting to blow up a
railroad track carrying passenger trains traveled to Iran within
the past two years, U.S. law enforcement and national security
officials said on Thursday.

Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born doctoral student,
traveled to Iran on a trip that was directly relevant to the
investigation of the alleged plot, the officials said.