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Nigeria's Senate kills a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed the country's president to run for a third term. Critics said the proposal would widen regional, ethnic and religious rifts. They hailed its failure as a victory for democracy.

The government's National Security Agency is building a giant database of all phone calls placed by Americans within the U.S., according to a report published in USA Today. The article says that the spy agency has been helped by major phone companies, including AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

A report in Thursday's USA Today reveals that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been secretly collecting records from AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth documenting phone calls within the United States. The agency reportedly wants to create a database of calls to help track terrorist activity. Madeleine Brand speaks with USA Today reporter Leslie Cauley, who broke the story.

The Bush administration says its program to monitor international financial records has a number of safeguards that prevent violation of privacy rights. But critics note that those safeguards are voluntary because this particular type of data tracking isn't covered by U.S. laws against government intrusion into private financial records.

With the arrivals of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court shifted to the right, as expected, in its just-completed term. But the shift was less dramatic because Justice Anthony Kennedy assumed a swing role.

Defense attorneys for former Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling make passionate closing arguments on their clients' behalf, ridiculing the prosecution's case. The jury gets the case today.

Israel bombs the Beirut airport and a Lebanese army air base, saying it holds Lebanon's government responsible for Wednesday's abduction of two Israeli soldiers -- an act carried out by Hezbollah militants. Nicholas Blanford of the Christian Science Monitor talks with Madeleine Brand about the escalating violence.

Hezbollah militants continue to fire rockets from southern Lebanon into Israeli towns and cities across the border. Two Israelis were killed, and more than 100 wounded, in Katyusha rocket attacks on Thursday.

Clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants in northern Gaza leave one Israeli soldier and more than 20 Palestinians dead. Israel invaded Gaza with the stated goal of freeing a captive soldier and protecting its territory from Palestinian rockets.

The man who claimed responsibility for the bloody Beslan school siege is dead, according to the Russian government. Officials say Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev was killed as he was planning an attack to coincide with this week's G8 summit in St. Petersburg.