The Justice Department's Inspector General also found that telecom charges and invoices for surveillance overwhelmed the FBI's ability to keep track of their bill and that one field office got a $66,000 bill from a carrier for unpaid surveillance work. (more)

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Dec. 13 -- An international impasse deepened here Thursday over U.S. refusal to accept specific targets in a "road map" toward reaching a worldwide climate agreement by 2009, as European leaders threatened to boycott the parallel process that President Bush launched with great fanfare a month and a half ago.

In a 48-minute speech, Gore urged delegates here to "go far, quickly" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming, saying they should forge ahead with a consensus statement and leave "a large open space in your document" to allow a future U.S. president to work more aggressively to curb global warming.

"My country's been responsible for obstructing the process here in Bali, we know that," he said to an overflow crowd, many of them forced to sit on the floor. "Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere where it is not now. You must anticipate that." 

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WASHINGTON—The assertion by a former CIA interrogator that the tactic known as waterboarding was effective in shaking potentially life-saving information from a leading terrorist has infused new passion into the debate over torture, both in the presidential campaign and in government.

Retired CIA agent John Kiriakou made the rounds of network and cable news programs Monday and Tuesday describing how waterboarding, an interrogation technique that makes a prisoner believe he is in imminent danger of drowning, had prompted Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah to provide critical information after he had held out for weeks. Kiriakou's revelations come on the heels of the disclosure that the CIA destroyed videotapes of such interrogations.

The retired agent's comments have revived one of the toughest questions in the torture debate: What if using distasteful, even repugnant, tactics is the most effective way to get hardened terrorists to reveal information that could save American lives?

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OSLO, Norway (AP) - Al Gore received his Nobel Peace Prize on Monday and urged the United States and China to make the boldest moves on climate change or ``stand accountable before history for their failure to act.''

``We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency - a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential even as we gather here,'' Gore said in his acceptance speech.

Gore shared the Nobel with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for sounding the alarm over global warming and spreading awareness on how to counteract it. the U.N. panel was represented at the ceremony by its leader, Rajendra Pachauri.

``It is time to make peace with the planet,'' Gore said at the gala ceremony in Oslo's city hall, in front of Norway's royalty, leaders and invited guests. ``We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war.''

The former vice president urged China and the U.S. - the world's biggest carbon emitters - to ``make the boldest moves, or stand accountable before history for their failure to act.'' (more)