National News @ LA Times

The move by the American Medical Assn. board means that one-third of adults and 17% of children in the U.S. have a medical condition that requires treatment.

The American Medical Assn. voted Tuesday to declare obesity a disease, a move that effectively defines 78 million American adults and 12 million children as having a medical condition requiring treatment.    

Judges on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals uphold Proposition 100, a 2006 ballot measure that created a constitutional amendment to create bail exceptions for immigrants who are in the country without authorization.

SAN FRANCISCO — An Arizona law that denies immigrants who are in the country without legal permission the right to post bail for a wide array of felonies won approval Tuesday from a divided federal appeals court.    

As the Congressional Budget Office finds that newly legal immigrants would generate more than enough money to offset the bill's costs, senators' differences on border security seem to narrow.

WASHINGTON — The sweeping immigration overhaul bill received a boost Tuesday as senators appeared to narrow their differences on border security and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that newly legal immigrants would provide more than enough new tax revenue, fees and economic growth to offset the bill's costs.    

The vice president notes that the administration has implemented or nearly completed 21 of 23 executive actions. He also tries to prod Congress into action.

WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden, seeking to reinvigorate the White House's stalled gun safety push, touted incremental progress Tuesday in nearly two dozen executive actions pledged by the administration in January.    

John Shafer, a Republican, told Congress that the groups' applications were pulled for scrutiny to ensure they were treated uniformly, a transcript shows.

WASHINGTON — An Internal Revenue Service manager who described himself as a "conservative Republican" told congressional investigators that no one in the agency's Cincinnati office was trying to target tea party organizations for political reasons, according to an interview transcript released Tuesday.    

BioWatch, which has cost more than $1 billion so far, is designed to detect large-scale biological attacks. But Homeland Security officials say small-scale attacks are more likely to occur.

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Department planners have privately rejected a central premise of BioWatch, the nation's decade-old system for detecting biological weapons released into the air, according to government documents and testimony Tuesday at a congressional hearing.    

In testimony, intelligence officials describe two new cases involving a bomb plot and terrorist funding that they say proved the value of surveillance programs.

WASHINGTON — Recently disclosed National Security Agency surveillance programs have helped disrupt more than 50 "potential terrorist events" around the world over the last 12 years, according to U.S. intelligence officials who described the spying operations as tightly regulated and extremely useful.    

In such deals, a drug maker agrees to pay a potential rival to delay selling a generic version. The decision may result in lower drug costs, advocates say.

WASHINGTON — A brand-name drug maker can be sued for violating antitrust laws if it agrees to pay a potential competitor to delay selling a generic version, the Supreme Court ruled.    

Walter Lee Williams faces charges of sexual exploitation of children abroad, the agency says. He taught anthropology, gender studies and history.

A former USC professor was named Monday to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted fugitives list after he was indicted for sex crimes against children abroad, FBI officials said.    

Clifford Sloan, a Washington attorney described as a 'bridge-builder,' will work with a Pentagon appointee to close the facility.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration announced Monday that it had chosen a longtime Washington attorney who has worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations to find a way to close down the prison at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.    

Some reporters who helped break the National Security Agency surveillance story reject the impartial journalistic stance that was a fundamental principle for a previous generation of reporters.

Edward Snowden may represent the archetypal leaker of the Internet age — a tech savant who justifies his civil disobedience as a righteous rebuttal to the big institutions he believes have intruded too far into ordinary people's lives.    

The initiative would probably include limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, an idea that could prompt a battle in the courts and Congress.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering a sweeping initiative to address climate change, including the first-ever limits on carbon dioxide from power plants, the country's biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions, according to people familiar with the discussions.    

The Supreme Court strikes down an Arizona law requiring people who register to vote to show proof of citizenship.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed with the Obama administration Monday in yet another of its confrontations with Arizona, striking down a state law on voter registrations and ruling that states may not require new applicants to show proof of their citizenship.    

Justices uphold the murder conviction of a Texas man who refused to answer a question. The 5-4 ruling says suspects must invoke their legal rights.

WASHINGTON — Crime suspects need to speak up if they want to invoke their legal right to remain silent, the Supreme Court said Monday in a ruling that highlights the limited reach of the famous Miranda decision.    

The Supreme Court will hear a housing discrimination case that raises an issue the Obama administration had tried to keep out of the court.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court reached out Monday to take up a politically volatile housing discrimination issue that the Obama administration had gone to great lengths to keep away from the court.    

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden rejects speculation that he spilled intelligence secrets to China in exchange for asylum.

WASHINGTON — Defiant and apparently unbowed by threats of prosecution, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden vowed Monday to release more secrets about U.S. intelligence surveillance systems that he described as "nakedly, aggressively criminal."    

A House panel will question officials under oath about the troubled system designed to detect airborne releases of anthrax or other biological weapons.

WASHINGTON — A decade ago, then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge oversaw the start of BioWatch, the nationwide system designed to detect airborne releases of anthrax or other biological weapons.    

The list of cases to be decided in the next two weeks includes Proposition 8, the Defense of Marriage Act and more.

Here are the top cases that the Supreme Court is expected to decide in the next two weeks:    

The intelligence officials also say that phone records and other pieces of information are destroyed every five years.

WASHINGTON — Top U.S. intelligence officials said Saturday that information gleaned from two controversial data-collection programs run by the National Security Agency thwarted potential terrorist plots in the U.S. and more than 20 other countries. They also said gathered data is destroyed every five years.    

Previous employees have said that the cyber-spying agency is tracking Americans' communications. Intelligence officials maintain that is not the case.

WASHINGTON — Mathematician William Binney worked for the National Security Agency for four decades, and in the late 1990s he helped design a system to sort through the digital data the agency was sucking up in the exploding universe of bits and bytes.