Your friend's new fuchsia fedora might be hideous. But don't call it gay, or you might get a language lesson from the conversation cops. Students at Queen's University who sprinkle their dialogue with an assortment of "homo" or "retarded" could find out the hard way that not everyone finds their remarks acceptable. The Kingston university has hired student facilitators to step in when they overhear homophobic slurs, remarks bashing women or racially tinged insults, along with an array of other language that could be deemed offensive. That means tête-à-têtes in the residence hallways may no longer be just between friends. "If people are having a conversation with offensive content and they're doing it loud enough for a third person to hear it ... it's not private," said Jason Laker, dean of student affairs at Queen's. "If you're doing anything that's interfering with what other people need to be doing, that's not cool." The initiative, believed to be the first of its kind in Canada, is part of a broader program begun at the school this fall to foster diversity and encourage students to think about their beliefs. But the move is sparking fresh debate over the line between politically correct behaviour and freedom of expression. Some students fear the university's program borders on oppressive. "Having a program like this in place could stifle public discussion if people are worried their private conversations are being monitored," said Angela Hickman, managing editor of the Queen's Journal, a campus newspaper. "For a lot of people, their opinions get formed in conversations and so stifling that is dangerous."

An autopsy says a man who died this summer was tased four times by Bertie County deputies. The report lists Clarence Smith's death as natural. On July 9th, the 29-year-old Smith died at Bertie Memorial Hospital. He was taken to the hospital after being tased by sheriff deputies, south of Windsor. Deputies were trying to take Smith to the hospital for an involuntary commitment after his sister said he was "acting funny." The autopsy obtained by WITN News says Smith was tased four times by deputies. About a half hour later, Smith stopped breathing in the hospital emergency room and later was pronounced dead.

Just-signed legislation requires the 222,000-student system to spend an estimated $9.5 million for file sharing "monitoring software," "monitoring hardware" and an additional "recurring cost of $1,575,000 for 21 staff positions and benefits (@75,000 each) to monitor network traffic" of its students.

When Jason Jones was arrested in a fatal shooting in the Bronx in May, he told the police that he had been nowhere near the scene. He said he had left work, ridden the bus with some co-workers and cashed his paycheck, and later had taken a subway to see his girlfriend. Months after the arrests, a retired detective working for Mr. Jones’s lawyers drove to a city jail located on a barge moored in the East River in the South Bronx, where Mr. Jones had been held after his arrest, and retrieved his wallet. The MetroCard was still inside. Mr. Jones’s lawyers then asked New York City Transit to use the card to trace his movements the night of the shooting. The results supported his account, showing that the card had been used on a bus, and later on a subway roughly five miles from the shooting, just as he had described. With that, and a photograph snapped of Mr. Jones, 26, as he cashed his paycheck, his lawyers argued that it was impossible for him to have committed the crime.

The TSA program trains screeners to become "behavior detection officers" who patrol terminals and checkpoints looking for travelers who act oddly or appear to answer questions suspiciously. The program has grown from 43 major airports last year to more than 150 airports, including some with just 20 flights a day. The number of behavior officers will jump from 2,470 to 3,400 by October. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program.

A computer memory stick said to contain top-secret information on terror suspects has been lost by police, it has been reported. The black 4GB stick went missing after being taken out of a police station by an officer on patrol in the West Midlands last Thursday. Officers have raided at least one property in the hunt for the device. Officials spent the weekend co-ordinating efforts to find it and it is understood that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has already been informed. West Midlands Police said it could not comment on the contents of the device, but local media reports suggested it held 'top-secret information on terror suspects'.

Keith Berry, the harbour master at Forth Ports Dundee, said yesterday that Ms Cameron had been seen as a “security risk”. Speaking about the incident, which took place in May, he said: “We contacted the police in regards to this matter because the woman was in a secure area which forbids people walking. It was seen as a security risk. We were following guidelines in requirement with the port security plan set up by the Government.”

The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the "IP Traceback" drafting group, named Q6/17. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public. The potential for eroding Internet users' right to remain anonymous, which is protected by law in the United States and recognized in international law by groups such as the Council of Europe, has alarmed some technologists and privacy advocates. Also affected may be services such as the Tor anonymizing network.

The program -- which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb -- must remain secret for now or it would "get people killed," Woodward said Monday on CNN's Larry King Live. "It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have," Woodward said. In "The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008," Woodward disclosed the existence of secret operational capabilities developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent leaders. National security adviser Stephen Hadley, in a written statement reacting to Woodward's book, acknowledged the new strategy.

Civil liberties watchdog Statewatch criticised the EU's post-9/11 security strategy as a "frightening" grab for every aspect of individual information. The 60-page report - published on the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington - said that the EU now saw data privacy and judicial scrutiny of police surveillance tactics as obstacles to efficient law enforcement co-operation, rather than rights to be safeguarded. It said that plans to co-operate with the US on "extremely controversial" techniques and technologies of surveillance and "enhanced" co-operation. The Statewatch report quotes an EU Council of Ministers document on justice and security which declared: "Every object the individual uses, every transaction they make and almost everywhere they go will create a detailed digital record.