Terrorism

The documents include emails showing the internal debate among intelligence agencies about how to characterize the attack.

Japan lost more people than any other country when Islamist militants attacked an Algerian gas facility last month. 

The troops have been deployed to support the ongoing efforts to rout Islamist militants in Mali. 

Drones have been very useful in targeting terrorists, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tuesday.

The U.S. embassy in Algeria is returning to a more normal routine one month after a terrorist attack on a natural gas facility in the country's western desert left at least 40 hostages dead, including three Americans.

The State Department issued an updated travel warning Tuesday announcing that it had lifted the authorized departure status for U.S. Embassy personnel and their dependents. The department allowed the departure from the capital, Algiers, for eligible family members following the Jan. 16 attack on the In Amenas BP oil facility and subsequent, credible kidnapping threats against westerners.

The country remains subject to a “high threat of terrorism and kidnappings,” however, with “the majority of terrorist attacks, including bombings, false roadblocks, kidnappings and ambushes occur[ing] in areas of the country east and south of Algiers.”

Chinese hackers have stolen data from at least 115 U.S. companies since 2006, according to the American security firm Mandiant.

"The president was virtually disengaged" from "an attack you could see coming," Sen. Lindsey Graham said.

The secretary of State's comments suggest the United States may yet ramp up its involvement in the country's civil war.

President Obama on Wednesday renewed for a year his 2011 declaration of emergency with regard to Libya.

Despite the fall of Muamar Gadhafi and democratic elections, Obama said the situation in the country still poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. The declaration allows the administration to keep in place sanctions on members of Gadhafi's family and  former regime officials.

“We are in the process of winding down the sanctions in response to developments in Libya, including the fall of Qadhafi and his government and the establishment of a democratically elected government,” Obama said in a message to Congress. 

President Obama defended his administration’s counterterrorism operations Tuesday, which have come under fire from liberal Democrats in recent weeks.

Obama did not use the word “drone” in his State of the Union address, but he said that the administration has created a “durable legal and policy framework” for counterterrorism operations, a reference to the recent disclosure of the administration’s “white paper” justifying the killing of American citizens with drone strikes if they are al Qaeda leaders.

“As we do, we must enlist our values in the fight,” Obama said. “That is why my administration has worked tirelessly to forge a durable legal and policy framework to guide our counterterrorism efforts.”