The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates

Newly released recordings from civil and military aviation officials on 11 September 2001 shows the confusion as the attacks of that day unfolded. The audio includes a flight attendant's plea for help and discussions about an order from Vice-President Dick Cheney to shoot down rogue civilian planes.

A senior Republican has called for an inquiry into reports the White House fed secrets about the killing of Osama Bin Laden to Hollywood film-makers. Peter King, chair of the House of Representatives homeland security committee, cited a report suggesting the White House hopes the film will boost President Obama's election bid. New York Times writer Maureen Dowd said film-makers had "top-level access".

Your brain doesn't like to keep secrets. Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, have shown that writing down secrets in a journal or telling a doctor your secrets actually decreases the level of stress hormones in your body. Keeping a secret, meanwhile, does the opposite.

Facebook was forced to take itself offline after a staff member accidentally leaked internal product prototypes. The social network was unreachable for about 20-30 minutes while the mess was cleared up.

A prototype spaceplane built for the US military has returned to Earth after seven months in orbit.

Australia's foreign minister has said the US is to blame for the release of thousands of diplomatic cables on Wikileaks, not its Australian founder, Julian Assange.

The US Air Force has warned its troops that using Facebook and other social networking sites could inadvertently reveal their location to the enemy.

Red faces in Washington? Well yes, almost certainly, and probably in a significant number of other capitals too, not least in the Middle East where a series of leaders and senior figures in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi are quoted as urging Washington to bomb Iran's nuclear programme.

The controversial whistle-blowing site Wilileaks has released a cache of 250,000 secret messages sent by US diplomatic staff. Here are some of the key issues the documents reveal, as reported by the New York Times and Guardian newspapers.

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has released a new set of secret US files. This latest batch of documents - cables sent by US embassies to the state department - is bigger than past releases on Afghanistan and Iraq. It includes reports of Arab states - including the king of Saudi Arabia - urging the US to attack Iran and end its nuclear weapons programme.

The recent, outlandish assassination in Dubai may prove the most damaging yet in the Mossad's history of high-profile, bungled operations. How did it squander its reputation for ruthless brilliance?