The Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department issued new guidelines on Friday that enforce stricter ethical standards for tax attorneys, accountants, and others offering tax advice. The new standards require those giving advice to rely on all related facts and to examine all relevant federal tax laws before drafting opinion letters that must clearly state [...]

Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, passed by the US Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, December 17, 2004. Read the full text of the act, as signed, here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US Bankruptcy Judge Letitia Clark took jurisdiction Thursday of a bankruptcy claim filed Tuesday by Russian oil giant Yukos, issuing a temporary 10-day injunction against the Russian government's sale of any Yukos assets and setting off a legal tug of war with Russian authorities over what law should govern the future of the company. Read [...]

President Bush signed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 into law Friday, implementing a series of intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission and authorizing the broadest re-working of the US intelligence structure since President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act in 1947. The new legislation was approved by the House [...]

An Iraqi official said Friday that former Saddam Hussein Defense Minister, Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad would join Ali Hassan al-Majid – known as "Chemical Ali" – in going before an Iraqi court next week for a hearing in preparation for trial. Ahmad surrendered to US forces in the Mosul area on September 19, 2003. The [...]

The Washington Post Friday published details about the existence of a hitherto-secret CIA prison within the Pentagon-run military detention facility for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prison has housed high-value detainees from Pakistan, West Africa, Yemen and other countries whose identities and incarceration have not previously been disclosed, although it is not clear [...]

European Union leaders agreed Thursday on a date of October 3, 2005 for the start of official talks with Turkey regarding its potential accession to the European Union. The European Parliament voted for the opening of talks earlier this week. At the same time, however, EU leaders are insisting that Tukey normalize its relations with [...]

Ohio Chief Justice Thomas Moyer Thursday threw out on a technicality a challenge filed by voting rights activists claiming that the November 2 vote in that state was invalid because of voting machine errors, double-counting of some ballots and a shortage of voting machines in predominantly minority precincts. Moyer ruled that the complaint improperly challenged [...]

Iceland has offered a residency permit to Bobby Fisher, the US chess champion now detained in Japan and wanted for extradition to the US who beat Russian Boris Spassky in a famous international chess match in Reykyavik in 1972. Fischer accepted the offer Friday, although it's still unclear whether he'll be allowed to take it [...]

Michael Froomkin, University of Miami School of Law: "At Guantanamo, a Prison Within a Prison: Within the heavily guarded perimeters of the Defense Department's much-discussed Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the CIA has maintained a detention facility for valuable al Qaeda captives that has never been mentioned in public, according to military officials and several [...]