US Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) has asked the FBI for "all information and documents it has" pertaining to "Able Danger" , the US Army intelligence program alleged to have identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers as members of al-Qaeda in mid-2000. According to Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Capt. Scott Philpott, [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union announced Thursday that it, along with an unnamed library, has filed suit in the US District Court of Connecticut against US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller challenging the constitutionality of a provision of the USA PATRIOT Act . According to the complaint , the ACLU is [...]
Merck is considering settling some of the thousands of state and federal lawsuits it faces for the distribution of its painkiller Vioxx , a spokesman for the company's legal team said Friday. This latest statement follows last week's $253 million Texas jury verdict in the first Vioxx personal injury lawsuit to go to trial. The [...]
Russian diplomats meeting with members of the Independent Inquiry Committee looking into the now defunct UN Oil-for-Food Program have said that Russian companies did not violate UN sanctions against Iraq while participating in the humanitarian program. As described in a Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement released Thursday, the committee members were told that: In [...]
The US Defense Department Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Service Academies released its report Thursday, announcing that, despite some progress, hostile attitudes and inappropriate treatment of women persist at the US Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Congress established the panel in response to a [...]
Following a one-day extension in negotiations on the Iraqi constitution , the speaker of the National Assembly said Friday that if consensus cannot be reached by the end of the day, the draft charter would bypass parliament and would instead be approved by an October 15 popular referendum. Hajim al-Hassani has said that the additional [...]
Leading Thursday's states brief, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law today a medical malpractice bill that he believes will lower medical malpractice insurance premiums. The bill will cap non-economic damages at $500,000 for doctors and $1 million for hospitals, allow the state to moderate the costs of malpractice insurance and require another doctor to [...]
A federal judge met with Justice Department lawyer Terry Henry Thursday to discuss why the US has not yet released two Chinese Uighur Muslims still held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp after the government determined they posed no threat to the US as enemy combatants . Henry met with US District Judge James Robertson [...]
AP is reporting that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament has announced a one-day extension for talks on the draft Iraqi constitution , originally scheduled to be voted on Thursday after being postponed for three days on Monday following a seven-day extension on the original August 15 deadline set down in the country's Transitional Administrative [...]
California's Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Thursday that the state is suing 39 pharmaceutical companies for concealing the actual costs of their drugs in an attempt to artificially inflate payments from California's Medicaid program. Lockyer said he added new drug companies including GlaxoSmithKline and Amgen to the state's prior complaint which named Abbott Laboratories and [...]
