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A national agency which will target major criminals such as drug smugglers and people-traffickers is due to come into force. The Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca), dubbed Britain's FBI, will unite expertise from the police, customs and immigration services. It will have more than 4,000 officers and will use existing and new legal powers to fight crime. Chairman Sir Stephen Lander once led MI5, the UK's internal security agency. Soca will target organised gangs who deal in people s ...

By Gideon Long and Sue Pleming LIVERPOOL (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to meet Muslim leaders in Blackburn on Saturday as she continues her two-day trip to Britain. Rice, in northern England as a guest of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw who is MP for Blackburn, will meet members of the Muslim community who make up around 20 percent of the town's population. She had been due to visit a mosque in the former cotton town until its governors withdrew their invitation out ...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Soyuz spacecraft carrying Brazil's first astronaut and a Russian-U.S. crew docked at the orbiting International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday, two days after blasting off from earth. "The docking was smooth and the crew are now preparing to open the hatches to enter the ISS," a spokesman for mission control, situated outside Moscow, said. Marcos Pontes, a 43-year-old Brazi ...

A key government adviser on terrorism has said four men who were held for two days under the Terrorism Act should receive an official police apology. Police detained the men at Stafford General Hospital but found no evidence of any crime before releasing them. Lord Carlile said the chief constable of Staffordshire should apologise and an independent inquiry should be held. The police have thanked the men for their co-operation and understanding.  ...

One of six men who fell seriously ill after a drug trial said he and the others are "furious" about the ordeal. Mohamed Abdelhady, 28, told the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror that his head swelled so much his fiancée said he looked like the Elephant Man. The restaurant manager said the men fell ill "straightaway", adding: "That's why we're so furious". Mr Abdelhady and the other volunteers had an inflammatory response after being hired to test the drug TGN1412. The trial participants had b ...

Own goals from Jordan Stewart and Jay DeMerit gifted Crystal Palace victory over promotion rivals Watford. The Hornets had taken the lead when Marlon King sprinted on to Gavin Mahon's pass and coolly slotted home. Palace equalised when substitute Dougie Freedman followed up after Watford keeper Ben Foster saved his penalty. Stewart inexplicably looped a header into his own net soon after and DeMerit deflected Clinton Morrison's cross past Foster late on to seal Palace's win. Crystal Palace ...

The Conservative party has insisted that it will not reveal the names of about 10 people who have lent it money but have now had their loans repaid. It owes £16m to 13 supporters who helped bankroll its election campaign. Almost £5m has been repaid to lenders - some of whom were foreign - but their identities will remain secret, prompting criticism from Labour. Tory chairman Francis Maude said he "regretted" accepting loans from abroad but insisted no laws had been broken. Permiss ...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia, faces possible criminal charges for a Wednesday altercation with a Capitol Police officer, one of her lawyers said Friday that the real issues were "sex, race and Ms. McKinney's progressiveness." In a news conference featuring actor Danny Glover and singer Harry Belafonte, McKinney said she would be exonerated and that "this whole incident was instigated by the inappropriate touching and stopping of me, a female, blac ...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police have arrested and charged three men with alleged links with a terrorist organisation after counter-terrorism teams swooped on Melbourne's northern suburbs, a top policeman said on Saturday.. The men, detained on Friday night, were alleged to have plotted a terrorist attack with 19 others arrested during raids in Sydney and Melbourne last November in the country's biggest counter-terrorism sweep. Federal and state police, along with the Australia Security In ...

BAGHDAD (CNN) -- American journalist Jill Carroll, who was released Thursday after being held hostage in Iraq for almost three months, slams the United States and praises Iraqi insurgents in a video posted on an Islamist Web site. A counterterrorism expert says Carroll may have been experiencing a touch of Stockholm syndrome, a defense mechanism in which kidnap victims empathize with their captors. However, Carroll's father flatly said his daughter was merely giving the kidnappers what they wa ...