By Lisa Myers and Jim Popkin, NBC News

Sen. Hillary Clinton has declined to return $170,000 in campaign contributions from individuals at a company accused of widespread sexual harassment, and whose CEO is a disbarred lawyer with a criminal record, federal campaign records show.

The federal government has accused the Illinois management consulting firm, International Profit Associates, or IPA, of a brazen pattern of sexual harassment including "sexual assaults,” “degrading anti-female language" and "obscene suggestions."

In a 2001 lawsuit full of lurid details, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims that 103 women employees at IPA were victimized for years. The civil case is ongoing, and IPA vigorously denies the allegations.

"This is by far, hands down, the worst case I've ever experienced," said Diane Smason, one of the EEOC lawyers handling the lawsuit. "Every woman there experienced sex harassment, they were part of a hostile work environment of sex harassment. And this occurred from the top down."

Sen. Clinton’s spokesman, Howard Wolfson, told NBC News in a statement that the senator decided to keep the funds because the lawsuit is "ongoing" and because none of the sexual harassment allegations has been proven in court. "With regard to the pending harassment suit, as a general matter, the campaign assesses findings of fact in deciding whether to return contributions," Wolfson said.

By Jonathan Dienst, WNBC Investigative Correspondent

Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu pleaded not guilty today in federal court in New York to orchestrating a $60 million fraud and making illegal political donations. After the hearing, Hsu's lawyer told WNBC that the once high-flying entrepreneur is "flat broke."

In leg irons and handcuffs, Hsu was flown to New York last night by U.S. Marshals. In this exclusive video shot by WNBC in New York, Hsu appeared gaunt and dazed as he walked on the tarmac at a New York-area airport.

Hsu's multi-layered legal troubles caused embarrassment for presidential contender Sen. Hillary Clinton, and prompted her to return $850,000 in campaign contributions. Hsu was indicted in December for mail fraud, wire fraud and violating the Federal Election Campaign Act.

By Michael Kosnar, NBC News Producer

For a crime buff who grew up in Chicago, the story we aired last night on
NBC Nightly News was too good to pass up.
 
It's the tale of how the Internal Revenue Service, not the FBI or Elliot Ness,
brought down legendary mob boss Al Capone.
 

By Robert Windrem and Dan Linden 

If the sky is falling, FEMA is prepared to catch it.

That’s the message tonight from FEMA - the agency made famous by its anemic response to Hurricane Katrina - to the threat posed by a spy satellite that could soon come crashing to earth.

FEMA has produced a memo and 18-page guide, a “First Responder Guide for Space Object Re-Entry,” that have been sent to thousands of local police, fire and emergency service agencies around the country.  It also has helpful hints for the public.

FEMA also has placed six “Federal Joint Interagency Task Forces” on alert in FEMA regions, ready to be deployed, just in case, according to the FEMA memo. A “Consequence Management Group” has been assembled at the Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center in Washington to manage the crisis, the memo adds.

By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News Chief Pentagon Correspondent

Pentagon officials tell NBC News that a U.S. Navy ship is preparing to launch a missile over the Pacific on Wednesday night, in an attempt to shoot down a dead spy satellite orbiting out of control in space.  If all goes as planned, the USS Lake Erie, an Aegis cruiser, will launch the SM-3 tactical missile at about sundown Hawaii time (or about 10:30pm EST) from a position about 600 miles northwest of Hawaii.

The spy satellite lost all power almost immediately after it was launched into space in December 2006. Without power, the 5,000-pound satellite, about the size of a school bus, would be expected to make an uncontrolled re-entry into the atmosphere and crash in early March.  Although half the satellite would be expected to burn up on re-entry, U.S. officials fear that the 1,000 pounds of potentially deadly hydrazine fuel on board pose a risk to people on the ground.  Military and NASA officials say that, because of that threat, they decided to attempt to destroy the satellite in space.

By Robert Windrem and Garrett Haake, NBC News

The State Department has been steadily increasing the number of visas granted to students and visitors from three Islamic nations -nations with connections to the Sept. 11 attacks and to al-Qaida, according to an NBC News survey of U.S. visa data.

Many counterterrorism experts welcome the increase in visas to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, arguing that exposure to American culture outweighs any possible risk from prospective terrorists.

Editor's Note: Updating from an earlier post:

By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News Chief Pentagon Correspondent

President Bush has personally authorized the U.S. military to launch a surface-to-air missile to destroy a disabled spy satellite that is orbiting out of control and is expected to reenter the atmosphere and crash to earth within the next several weeks. This is the first time the U.S. military will attempt to shoot down an orbiting satellite with a tactical missile.

By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News Chief Pentagon Correspondent

Editor's Note: This post has been updated.

It sounds like a scene from "Star Wars." Today, the Pentagon will reveal its plans to knock a dead spy satellite out of the sky with missiles launched from Navy ships. This is the first time the U.S. military will have used a surface-to-air missile to destroy a satellite in space.

By Pete Williams, NBC News Justice Correspondent

The U.S. Senate's ethics committee seems to have been more concerned with what Senator Larry Craig did after his arrest in an airport bathroom in June 2007 than with the conduct itself that led to the arrest.

In its "Public Letter of Admonition," addressed to Sen. Craig and released Wednesday night, the committee reviewed the airport incident but did not characterize how it reflected on his Senate colleagues. Instead, the bulk of the letter dealt with what he did in response to his arrest.

By Robert Windrem, NBC News Producer

The Versailles Château in France, the Grand Peterhof Palace in Russia and the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany are all over-the-top palaces built at enormous taxpayer expense. But, in many ways, those grand old European estates can’t compare to the architectural extravaganzas built by the 20th Century’s most notorious dictators. 

An NBC News video analysis of “dictators’ digs,” compiled with satellite photos, unveils the decadent lives of the rich and infamous.

By Aram Roston, NBC News Producer

One of the only Americans to have met Imad Mugniyeh, the terrorist leader killed in Syria, tells NBC News that the Hezbollah militant burned with "hatred" for the United States.

Kurt Carlson, of Illinois, was one of the hostages onboard TWA Flight 847 when it was hijacked in 1985 during a flight from Athens to Rome. In Beirut, the hijackers shot U.S. Navy diver Robert Stetham, a passenger on the plane, and dumped his body on the runway.

By Robert Windrem, NBC News Producer

U.S. counter-terrorism officials tell NBC News that Hezbollah commander Imad Mugniyeh, killed today in a car-bomb attack in Syria, was the most highly sought terrorist after al-Qaida leaders Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The reason, they say, is simple: Mugniyeh was responsible for more American deaths than anyone other than the al-Qaida terrorists.

“Other than a Bin Laden, no one is more dangerous than this guy,” a senior western counterterrorism official told NBC News.  “He has a huge rap sheet, and don’t believe this canard that he had ‘retired’.  He was very active and still dangerous.  He was the architect of every Hezbollah attack the last quarter century.”

By Carol Grisanti and Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News, Pakistan

The Taliban may have scored a big propaganda victory again. They appear to have kidnapped the Pakistani Ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, Pakistani officials tell NBC News.

The Ambassador has been missing for nearly two days, and officials presume that he was kidnapped in Khyber, one of the seven lawless tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. His car was recovered in Zakhakhel, a village in the Tirah Valley of the Khyber Agency, where the mountains are high and the roads are few. Only the locals and the professional smugglers know the well-worn footpaths that lead through the valley and over the mountains into Afghanistan.

By James Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Correspondent

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is reminding law-enforcement officials of the increased use of female suicide bombers worldwide, and warning that women terrorists might hide explosives in devices “that mimic the look of a pregnant woman.”

The unclassified DHS threat assessment, released Monday and obtained by NBC News, shows photographs of “pregnancy prosthetics,” hollowed-out devices that could hold explosive devices. The report says “female suicide bombers have used devices that make them appear pregnant to hide explosive devices.”

By Aram Roston, NBC News Producer

A massive fire that destroyed the records of Iraq's Central Bank last week, while causing no fatalities, is being investigated as a possible arson, two American officials familiar with the case tell NBC News.
 
The fire on January 28 was reported to have killed no one, but it consumed large parts of the Central Bank building in Baghdad, and destroyed key records. It reportedly started around 2 am.
 

By Lisa Myers, Jim Popkin and Rich Gardella, NBC News

Gov. Mike Huckabee, vastly outspent so far in his bid for the presidency, has turned for funding to a controversial televangelist who is under active Senate investigation. Late last month, Gov. Huckabee held a fundraiser at the Texas estate of millionaire televangelist Kenneth Copeland, his spokesman tells NBC News.

The U.S. Senate currently is investigating Copeland, and five other televangelists, amid allegations that they are improperly using millions in charitable donations for their personal benefit, and, in the process, fleecing their flock. Copeland and the other televangelists have strongly denied those allegations.

By Robert Windrem, NBC News producer

Where is accused terrorist Adam Gadahn?

By Jonathan Dienst, Joseph Valiquette and Alice McQuillan, WNBC

The entire hierarchy of the Gambino organized crime family was rounded up Thursday morning in what law enforcement officials are calling the biggest mafia bust in more than 20 years, WNBC.com has learned.

Dozens of reputed members of the Gambino crime family were charged with murders, drug trafficking, robberies, extortion, and other crimes dating back to the 1970s, authorities said Thursday.

Some 62 people were being sought or were in custody in the New York area.

By Pete Williams and Mike Kosnar, NBC News

Updating...

The Justice Department today said two Chinese companies and a US importer were responsible for last year's pet food scare that resulted in the deaths of thousands of dogs and cats and the recall of millions of cans and bags of pet food.

By Pete Williams, NBC News Justice Correspondent

The Justice Department is worried that nearly 1,600 convicted crack dealers, many of them violent gang members, could soon be released from prison when new federal sentencing rules go into effect.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is asking Congress to blunt the effect of the new sentencing rules. They will allow nearly 20,000 inmates nationwide - many of them violent drug offenders - to get out of prison early.

By Robert Windrem and Victor Limjoco, NBC News

So what did U.S. intelligence officers learn from the three accused al-Qaida terrorists whom the CIA waterboarded to gain information?

It’s all laid out in the 9/11 Commission Final Report and the hearing record of the Defense Department’s Combatant Status Review Tribunal.  The reports detail what  Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah revealed following their exposure to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

By Pete Williams, NBC News Justice Correspondent

The director of the CIA today gave the most extensive public accounting yet of the use of coercive interrogation methods, including waterboarding, and strongly urged Congress not to limit the range of methods available to U.S. intelligence agencies.

CIA director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing that fewer than 100 people have been held by the CIA in its terrorist detention program. And of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to enhanced interrogation methods, he said.

By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer

The Statue of Liberty, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial are all national icons - potent symbols of American ideals and democracy.

And yet these national treasures are often left woefully unprotected - by absent guards, sleeping officers, and a disinterested, under-trained police force, according to a stinging report published today by the Interior Department’s Inspector General.