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Reports on the trend of housing loan mortgages in the U.S. as of April 1, 2004. Increase in the dollar threshold for jumbo mortgages in recent years; Interest rates carried on such mortgages; Difference in policies regarding housing loans above $333,700.

The article reports on the Arctic strategy of the U.S. Department of Defense which is for the safeguard of American security interests and the environment of the region.

PARIS -- While the debt debacle in Washington preoccupies America, it is causing jitters in power corridors from Beijing to Brussels. The stewards of the world's largest economies are anxious for a compromise, to keep their own finances from suffering collateral damage. Their worries stem from an inescapable reality: for other governments, there is still no good alternative to holding the almighty dollar, or American Treasury securities, even if the United States gets tarnished by a once-unthinkable credit downgrade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NEW DELHI -- In the United States, law enforcement and security agencies have raised privacy concerns with a new proposal for electronic eavesdropping powers to track terrorists and criminals and unscramble their encrypted messages. But here in India, government authorities are well beyond the proposal stage. Prompted by fears of digital-era plotters, officials are already demanding that network operators give them the ability to monitor and decrypt digital messages, whenever the Home Ministry deems the eavesdropping to be vital to national security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federal prosecutors announced charges on Thursday against 41 lenders, lawyers and others in the real estate industry who they said used fraud to obtain more than $64 million in loans connected to more than 100 residential properties in New York State. An investigation involving the F.B.I., the Secret Service, the New York State Banking Department and other agencies led to the wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy charges against the lawyers, mortgage brokers and loan officers, who engaged in complex plots that operated over a period of years, said Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Bush administration has informed Congress that it is bypassing a law intended to forbid political interference with reports to lawmakers by the Department of Homeland Security. The August 2007 law requires the agency's chief privacy officer to report each year about Homeland Security activities that affect privacy, and requires that the reports be submitted directly to Congress ''without any prior comment or amendment'' by superiors at the department or the White House. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

WITH only perfunctory debate, the Bush administration is pressuring a divided Iraqi government to approve a security agreement that could haunt Washington's relations with Baghdad for years to come. The ''strategic alliance'' that President Bush is proposing eerily resembles, in spirit and in letter, a failed 1930 treaty between Britain and Iraq that prompted a nationalist eruption in Baghdad, a pro-Nazi military coup and a pogrom that foreshadowed the elimination of Baghdad's ancient Jewish community. The outline of the deal, which has not been made public, has been described by a high-level Iraqi insider, Ali A. Allawi, a moderate Shiite who was a post-invasion finance minister. Writing this month in The Independent of London, Mr. Allawi noted a disturbing parallel between the proposed alliance between the United States and Iraq and the earlier treaty that formally ended Iraq's post-World War I status as a British mandate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article reports that Thornburg Mortgage Inc. has repaid $5.1 million in collateral, to Wachovia Corp. as the former was sued by the latter one. A spokeswoman of Wachovia, Christy Phillips-Brown said that the payment had been received by the bank but it has not decided whether the suit would be dropped. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in New York.

Reports on the increase in mortgage applications in the U.S.

Reports that United States Department of Defense Secretary William S. Cohen plans to order a review to determine whether military commanders in the Persian Gulf should be held accountable for any security lapses that contributed to the bombing of the ship Cole in Yemen in October 2000.