A US bankruptcy judge in New York City on Thursday declined to extend an order to block the sale of the controlling stake of Mazeikiu Nafta , the largest oil refinery owned by crippled oil company Yukos . As a result, Yukos is expected to finalize the sale of the Lithuanian-based refinery to Poland based [...]

A panel of federal judges headed by US District Judge D. Brock Hornby of Maine has begun considering whether members of the federal bench should have their way paid to private seminars. Federal judges are currently allowed to go on expense-paid trips as long as they report the travel, but travel financed by private organizations [...]

Belarus plans to appeal decisions by the European Union and the United States to ban Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and other top government officials from entering their jurisdictions, according to a Lukashenko spokesman. Lukashenko on Tuesday instructed his government to prepare appeals against the decisions to be taken to international courts. Belarus Ministry of Foreign [...]

Congress has approved and sent to President Bush for his signature a measure designed to prevent demonstrators from getting close to military funerals at national cemeteries. The US Senate approved the final version of the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act by unanimous consent Wednesday, and the US House followed suit with a voice vote. [...]

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker , whose country held the EU presidency when France and the Netherlands voted against the European constitution, said Thursday that Germany's push to ratify the European Constitution will not be easy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly pledged to revive the constitution when Germany assumes the EU presidency in January. [...]

The US Department of Justice argued Wednesday in a court filing that the US courts have traditionally been "ill-equipped" to judge harm to national security and that the executive branch should therefore decide whether information surrounding the US National Security Agency (NSA) domestic surveillance program should be disclosed. The DOJ made the claim in a [...]

A Tokyo District Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by South Korean families seeking damages for affronting the dignity of South Korean soldiers by recording their names in the Yasukuni Shrine , which commemorates the 2.5 million casualties of Japanese conflicts since 1869. The soldiers, whom Japan drafted while Korea was a Japanese colony, [...]

A judge from the Iraqi town that is the focus of the ongoing Saddam Hussein trial was abducted by gunmen Wednesday. Dujail Judge Walid Ahmed was kidnapped from his car on the highway between Tikrit and Samarra, according to an Interior Ministry source. It is unclear whether the abduction was related to the trial. Last [...]

US Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Wednesday that Vice President Dick Cheney may be a witness in the government's case against former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby , who is being prosecuted in connection to the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity . Fitzgerald believes Cheney's testimony would help the government's case [...]

A high-ranking US Army officer testified Wednesday in the court-martial of Sgt. Santos Cardona, the second of two soldiers accused of using unmuzzled dogs to terrify detainees during interrogations at the Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller , the former commander of military intelligence at Guantanamo Bay , told the [...]