Senate panel votes to extend surveillance law (AP)

WASHINGTON – The Senate Intelligence Committee has voted to extend a wide-ranging surveillance law targeting foreigners overseas, but Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon says he will block the measure unless the public is told more about the law’s impact on people living in the United States.

In a closed-door session, the committee turned aside an amendment by Wyden and Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado that would have directed the Justice Department’s inspector general to estimate how many people inside the U.S. have had their telephone calls and emails monitored by government agents under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments of 2008.

The law, due to expire at the end of next year, would be extended to June 2015 if the committee action becomes law.

The 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which were bitterly disputed in Congress, allow the government to obtain from a secret court broad, yearlong intercept orders that target foreign groups and people overseas, raising the prospect that phone calls and emails between those foreign targets and innocent Americans in this country also will be collected and reviewed.

The 2008 amendments also shielded telecommunications companies from lawsuits that complained that the companies helped the government spy on

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Peru votes in tight poll run-off

4 June 2011
Last updated at 23:29 ET

On the left and right of the political spectrum – presidential hopefuls Ollanta Humala and Keiko Fujimori

Voters in Peru are set to cast their ballots on Sunday in a closely fought presidential second-round run-off.

They face a choice of Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori, and Ollanta Humala, one-time ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

The two candidates are at opposite ends of the political spectrum – a fact that has worried some Peruvians who say they will not vote for either of them.

Opinion polls indicate that the outcome is too close to call.

The two candidates led the field after the first round on 10 April, which saw the defeat of three centrist candidates. No-one gained more than the 50% needed to win the election outright.

Whoever wins Sunday’s vote will succeed Alan Garcia, who cannot stand for a second term.

Spoiled ballots

Keiko Fujimori, 36, appeals to voters who still admire her father, president for a decade from 1990. He is now serving a 25-year jail sentence for corruption and organising death squads.

She has defended his record, saying by taming hyper-inflation and defeating Marxist Shining Path rebels, he laid the basis for Peru’s current economic boom.

She supports free-market economic policies, advocates a tough approach to crime and has promised to improve social programmes and infrastructure in poor areas.

Critics say her main aim is to secure a pardon for her father, a claim she denies.

If she wins, she would become Peru’s first woman president.

Ollanta Humala, 48, comes from a left-wing tradition of greater state intervention. He staged a short-lived rebellion against Alberto Fujimori in 2000 and narrowly lost to Alan Garcia in the last presidential election in 2006.

He has campaigned on a promise to increase the state’s role in the economy and redistribute wealth to Peru’s poor majority.

His critics fear he will embark on interventionist policies similar to those of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, although Mr Humala says he is more in sympathy with Brazil’s moderate left-wing approach.

He has also denied allegations that he committed human rights abuses during the fight against Shining Path rebels in the 1990s when he was an army captain.

Polls suggest that around 10% of Peru’s voters could abstain or spoil their ballots, Reuters news agency reports.

Peruvian painter Fernando de Szyszlo is one of those. “It really pains me not to vote, but I’m not voting,” he told the Associated Press.

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