The transcript released Monday was the fourth from the hearings the military is holding in private for 14 "high-value" terror suspects who were kept in secret CIA prisons before they were sent to the U.S. facility in Cuba last fall.

Last week, Waleed bin Attash said he helped plan the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200, according to the transcript. He also said he helped organize the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in which suicide bombers steered an explosives-laden boat into the guided-missile destroyer, killing 17 sailors.

Identity thieves are offering a person’s credit-card number, date of birth and other sensitive information for as little as US$14 over the Internet, said a new report on online threats released Monday.

The data is sold on so-called “underground economy servers,” used by criminal organizations to hawk information they’ve captured through hacking, Symantec said in its Internet Security Threat Report, which tracked online trends from June to December 2006. The information can then be used for identity scams such as opening a bank account in a false name.

“U.S.-based credit cards with a card verification number were available for between US$1 to $6, while an identity — including a U.S. bank account, credit card, date of birth and government-issued identification number — was available for between $14 to $18,” the report said.

Some 51 percent of the servers hosting the information were in the U.S., in part because the growth in broadband Internet access in the U.S. has created new opportunities for criminals, Symantec said. About 86 percent of the credit and debit card numbers available on those servers were issued by U.S. banks, it said.

One way that criminals have gained access to computers is by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities, or software flaws that are being exploited as soon as they are revealed and before a patch has been released.

Symantec documented 12 zero-day vulnerabilities in the period from June to December 2006. Only one was found in its two prior six-month reporting periods, the company said.

Hackers have exploited some of those vulnerabilities by creating malicious documents in Microsoft Office and other software, said Ollie Whitehouse, a security architect at Symantec.

A malicious Word or Excel document, when attached to a spam e-mail, has a greater chance of being opened by someone since it may appear legitimate and be targeted at an employee of a specific company.

While security software programs will often block executable programs attached to e-mail, common Office documents are allowed to go through, Whitehouse said.

“A business isn’t going to say ‘We will no longer accept Office documents received via email,’” Whitehouse said. “I think productivity would go through the floor at that point. Unfortunately, this is where the security requirement and the business requirement do really clash.”

A video posted on Symantec’s blog, shows a sophisticated attack where a malicious document is opened that puts a harmful executable onto the system and then opens a regular Word document. The attack is almost invisible to the user, apart from a flicker on the screen before the Word document opens.

“Office documents — PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets — and graphics like JPEGs aren’t necessarily considered malicious file formats, so the user is more inclined to open them,” Whitehouse said.

Among the names floated Monday by administration officials are Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure whether he would want the job.

Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales. Still known as "The Judge" for his service on the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales is one of the few remaining original Texans who came to Washington with President Bush.

State Farm Insurance will accelerate settlement payouts to Mississippi Gulf Coast residents whose homes were affected by Hurricane Katrina, according to Mississippi Insurance Commissioner George Dale Monday. Dale told Reuters that after the court delayed certifying a proposed settlement, he negotiated with State Farm "to bring closure for coastal homeowners." State Farm had originally reported that it would no longer write new policies to insure Mississippi home owners when the settlement was delayed, but Dale said his the resolution would discourage State Farm, Mississippi's largest insurer, from leaving the state. The agreement makes millions of additional dollars available to insured homeowners in three coastal counties.

In February, State Farm filed to have a judge removed from a Katrina class action lawsuit for bias. In January, a Mississippi jury held State Farm liable for $2.5 million dollars in punitive damages for rejecting a Katrina claim that State Farm said was due to wind before the storm rather than the hurricane itself. In the same month, State Farm agreed to settle with hundreds of Mississippi homeowners, but the judge rejected the proposed settlement.

Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks has filed for an injunction to delay his military trial currently scheduled to start March 20. Maj. Michael Mori, Hicks' Pentagon-appointed lawyer, said Saturday that Hicks' defense team asked the US District Court in Washington last week to order the suspension of Hicks' military commission, even though he admitted the bid will likely be unsuccessful.

The injunction bid was made in parallel with an appeal by other Guantanamo inmates to the US Supreme Court, asking for the right to challenge their detention in US courts.

US military prosecutors have charged Hicks with providing material support to terrorists. He is expected to plead not guilty.

Former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan will be hanged Tuesday, according to Iraqi legal sources quoted by wire services Monday afternoon. The Iraqi government has scheduled the execution despite defense lawyers' contention that the government must wait at least 30 days after sentencing to execute a defendant. Ramadan, found guilty with Saddam Hussein of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) in November for his role in the reprisal killings of 148 Shiites at Dujail, lost an appeal of his sentence last week. He was originally given a life sentence, but after intervention by the appeals panel the trial court in February ordered the death penalty.

Following the failed appeal Ramadan's Rome-based lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano sent a letter to Gen. David Petraeus, commanding general of the Multi-National Force Iraq, urging him to intervene and prevent Ramadan's transfer from US to Iraqi custody. Di Stefano has also petitioned Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who has expressed opposition to the death penalty, to intervene and commute Ramadan's sentence. In an e-mail to JURIST late Monday, Di Stefano, formerly one of lawyers representing Saddam Hussein, said he had already moved to prosecute Saddam trial chief judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman in the UK after he was alleged to have sought asylum there, and would "prosecute any and all that have been involved in the execution of my clients."

Last week, UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Leandro Despouy urged the Iraqi government not to execute Ramadan because of "grave shortcomings" in his legal process. In February, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Phillip Alston also called on the government to suspend the execution because of judicial misconduct.