Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari told reporters Saturday in Baghdad that the vacant posts in his Cabinet sworn in last week – five ministers and one deputy prime minister – have now been filled, and that the nominess had been approved by President Jalal Talabani and the country's two vice-presidents. The appointments would appear to [...]

Representative Henry Hyde, GOP chairman of the US House International Relations Committee now undertaking a Congressional review of the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, refused late Friday to hand back to the UN-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) probing the UN program sensitive IIC documents subpoenaed by Congress and handed over to US lawmakers by former IIC senior [...]

The US DC Circuit Court of Appeals Friday upheld a lower court dismissal of a case brought by fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds alleging security lapses in the FBI's translator program. The lower court had said that Edmonds' case could reveal government secrets and harm national security as contended by Justice Department lawyers who had [...]

Human rights groups Friday dismissed a new US report to the Geneva-based UN Committee Against Torture that claimed the United States was appropriately prosecuting US personnel accused of mistreating prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo and denied that the abuse was systemic or sanctioned by high-ranking US officials. Spokesman for Amnesty International and Human Rights [...]

American Library Association v. FCC, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, May 6, 2005 . Excerpt: It is axiomatic that administrative agencies may issue regulations only pursuant to authority delegated to them by Congress. The principal question presented by this case is whether Congress delegated authority to the Federal Communications [...]

US District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema Friday set January 9, 2006, as the date for jury selection in the penalty phase of Zacarias Moussaoui's trial on charges relating to the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington. Opening statements will begin approximately a month later, on February 6. The order came one day [...]

The Real ID Act , which would set guidelines for state identification cards must follow and would require the presentation of four forms of ID to obtain a driver's license, awaits a vote in the Senate after passing the US House of Representatives Thursday as part of a $82 billion emergency supplemental appropriations bill. The [...]

Efforts by delegates from 188 countries attending the UN's 2005 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference to agree on a final agenda were foiled Friday by Egypt's last-minute call for the meeting to include a review of how well nuclear powers have met commitments set in 2000 to move towards the treaty aim of achieving nuclear [...]

Japan threatened Friday to leave the International Whaling Commission to form a pro-whaling commission by 2006 if the 20-year moratorium on commercial whaling is not lifted and the IWC fails to establish a new whaling management system that would set quotas for whaling countries. Commercial whaling has been banned world-wide since 1986 and has been [...]

Robert Parton, who resigned last month as senior investigative counsel for the Independent Inquiry Committee into the defunct UN Oil-for-Food Program , has handed over potentially incriminating documents to a US congressional committee. The handover, made public Thursday, triggered outrage from inquiry head and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Paul Volcker who believes [...]