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U.S. authorities are using laws dating to the 1700s in novel ways to combat piracy on the high seas, going after people who may never actually climb aboard a ship. The targets include men who negotiate and finance piracy plots as far away as the horn of Africa. And the strategy may be working.

Law and national security experts got together last weekend for a dogfight they call the Drone Smackdown. The contest, though tongue in cheek, still raised lots of questions about the proliferation of drones, the rules of combat and federal efforts to regulate them.

Attorney Gen. Eric Holder said it could not bring criminal charges, because of insufficient "admissible evidence."

NPR has learned that the Obama administration, under pressure to lift a cloak of secrecy, is considering whether to declassify a court order that gives the National Security Agency the power to gather phone call record information on millions of Americans.

Drone strikes ordered by the Obama administration have killed more than a dozen al-Qaida leaders around the world. But when the ACLU asked for more information about the targeted killing, the CIA said it's a secret. Now the case is headed to federal appeals court.

The Justice Department on Tuesday apologized to Kirk Odom for the "terrible injustice" of more than two decades spent in prison for rape and robbery. "There is clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Odom is innocent," the government now says, based on DNA tests and hair analysis.

The attack at a Sikh temple by a gunman with ties to white supremacists has raised questions about domestic terrorism — and what law enforcement is doing to stop it. In recent years, the Internet, the worsening economy and changing demographic patterns have given new voice to hate groups.

John Walker Lindh was a middle-class kid in Northern California who converted to Islam, traveled the world, and was captured by U.S. authorities in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, allegedly fighting alongside the Taliban. Now, he's suing the government over religious rights at a secret prison facility.

The lawyer for a former State Department contractor accused of leaking top-secret data to Fox News says that intelligence agencies are calling too many harmless documents "classified." In federal court, attorney Abbe D. Lowell cited an example: a note between the defendant and his child.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act has removed racial barriers for generations of black voters in the South. Now a legal challenge raises the question of just how much federal oversight election laws still need.