New Japanese compulsory insurance rules requiring all foreign ships over 100 tons entering Japanese ports to be insured against oil spills, losses and other damages went into effect Tuesday, effectively barring most North Korean ships. The requirements are seen as a disguised move against direct trade with North Korea; Japan has been considering sanctions against [...]

Tenet v. Doe, Supreme Court of the United States, March 2, 2005 . Excerpt from the court's opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist: We reverse because this holding contravenes the longstanding rule, announced more than a century ago in Totten, prohibiting suits against the Government based on covert espionage agreements…. The state secrets privilege and the [...]

Leading Wednesday's corporations and securities law news, Titan Corp. announced it reached administrative settlement agreement with the US Navy allowing the company to bid, receive and perform on government contracts. Read the Titan press release. The agreement comes a day after Titan agreed to pay a $28.5 million to settle criminal charges brought by the [...]

Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported Wednesday that a disk seized from the home of one the suspected Madrid train bombers contained detailed plans of New York's Grand Central Station , including "highly specialized technical information." The disk was confiscated within two weeks of the March attack, but the FBI was not warned about the information [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales presented the FY 2006 Justice Department budget Tuesday to the US House Committee on Appropriations . Gonzales testified that the FBI's counterterrorism workload has tripled since the 2001 terrorist attacks. The requested FY 2006 DOJ budget includes funding for the National Counterterrorism Center , which is meant to provide a [...]

Unanimously reversing a Ninth Circuit ruling , the US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in Tenet v. Doe that two former spies for the CIA could not sue the agency for support after it had backed out of an alleged agreement to provide them with permanent stipends. The two, designated John and Jane Doe, had originally [...]

Chief Executive of Hong Kong Tung Chee Hwa is reportedly going to step down from office as the leader of the Chinese special administrative region of Hong Kong for health reasons. Tung took the leadership position in 1997 after China assumed control of the former British colony. He has, however, grown increasingly unpopular in the [...]

Thousands of hours of audio tapes and transcripts of conversations of Enron traders talking about, or engaging in, violations of federal regulations were released Tuesday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission . FERC has indicated that it will likely use some of the materials pulled from the transcripts of the tapes in its criminal cases [...]

Attending an international one-day summit in London Tuesday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas committed the Palestinian Authority to a range of legal and judicial reforms deemed necessary for the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state. The reforms, set out in the final summit report , include: passing a new electoral law to ensure the fair [...]

Taiwanese Premier Frank Hsieh has warned that China's planned approval of an anti-secession law will strain relations between the two countries, destroying the goodwill recently developed by the opening of commercial flights between the two nations over the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday. The legislation would make it illegal for Taiwan to declare independence under [...]