Senior Vice President at Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary General Re Richard Napier pleaded guilty Friday to helping international insurance giant AIG misstate its finances. Both Napier and former General Re executive John Houldsworth, who pleaded guilty Thursday to the same charge, worked on a reinsurance transaction with AIG in 2000. Houldsworth's plea agreement indicates that Napier [...]

The Washington-based monitoring group Human Rights First has released a new report detailing a significant rise in violent hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and immigrants in Europe. In France, anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 63% from 2003 to 2004. In Britain, violent anti-Semitic assaults doubled in 2004. Published to coincide with Conference on Anti-Semitism and Other [...]

The leading Sunni Muslim political grouping in Iraq rejected the Shiite-led Iraqi government's offer of an additional 13 seats on the country's constitutional committee Friday, sticking to its demand for 25 seats and threatening to boycott negotiations on the charter if their demands are not met. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari had endorsed the offer, which [...]

Financial giant Citigroup said Friday that it will pay $2 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit over its role in helping to engineer a massive accounting fraud at Enron . The settlement will distribute payments to Enron investors who bought stock in the company during the period when Enron sought bankruptcy protection between 1997 and [...]

In an apparent dig at the US, a veteran Spanish anti-terror judge emphasized the necessity of international cooperation, law and reason in the pursuit of terrorism Thursday in a special UN-sponsored meeting in New York . Baltasar Garzon , an investigating judge for Spain's National Court, said "Terrorism is a crime, it's not a movement [...]

Nevada death row inmate Robert McConnell invoked an 11th-hour appeal Thursday night to avoid a scheduled execution at Nevada State Prison , saying he didn't want to die. The former car salesman was sentenced to death for murdering his ex-girlfriend's fiance and told reporters he should have followed through with a plan to murder his [...]

A group of US navy veterans who survived a surprise attack by Israeli forces against their vessel during the Six Day War in 1967 are seeking a Pentagon investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes. Members of the USS Liberty Veterans Association claim that the unprovoked attack, which occurred in international waters against the spy ship [...]

In a report on the FBI's handling of intelligence related to the September 11 attacks released Thursday, US Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine concluded that the FBI missed several opportunities to detect and prevent the terror strikes. In particular, the FBI failed to aggressively pursue an agent's theory that Osama bin Laden planned [...]

Head of Bolivia's Supreme Court Eduardo Rodriguez was sworn in as president of the country late Thursday after the Bolivian Congress accepted the second resignation of President Carlos Mesa . Bolivia's third president in less than two years, Rodriguez accepted the position only after the Speakers of both houses of Congress declined to exercise their [...]

The International Labour Organization (ILO) Thursday called for a ban on child labor in mines and quarries as the focus for the World Day Against Child Labour on June 12. The agency has urged labor unions, employers and governments to provide financial aid to small, family run mines in order to relieve their dependence on [...]