The National Archives began an investigation Wednesday into the disappearance of a file containing papers authored by US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts on affirmative action. Officials said the file disappeared from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California after two lawyers from the White House and Justice Department reviewed and returned it [...]

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Vladimiro Montesinos , a close aide of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori and Peru's former intelligence chief, went on trial Wednesday on charges that he ordered the massacres of Maoist rebel supporters by paramilitary death squads in the 1990s. Montesinos' past is full of questionable activities, including allegations of election fraud and even forging a [...]

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Federal Tort Trials and Verdicts, 2002-03, United States Department of Justice, August 17, 2005 . Excerpt: From 1985 to 2003 the number of tort trials terminated in U.S. district courts declined 79%. Juries decided about 71% of tort trials in 2002-03, while judges adjudicated the remainder. Plaintiffs won in almost half of tort trials, and [...]

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David Satterfield, the number-two diplomat at the US Embassy in Baghdad, is allegedly one of the anonymous government officials said to have disclosed classified information to a Department of Defense analyst and two former officials of the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) , who pleaded not guilty earlier this week to [...]

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There has been an almost 80 percent decrease in the number of federal tort trials from 1985 to 2003, the US Department of Justice said in a report released Wednesday. According to Federal Tort Trials and Verdicts, 2002-03 , the decrease can be attributed to the growing use of alternative dispute resolution and the increased [...]

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Police in Bangladesh have detained almost 50 people for questioning after a series of over 100 bombs exploded across the country on Wednesday, killing two and injuring over 100. The near-simultaneous bombings took place outside government buildings and court houses in almost every major city in Bangladesh. Police say leaflets from a banned Islamic group, [...]

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The trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic resumed Wednesday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia after a summer recess, with Milosevic calling ethnic Albanian witnesses from Kosovo to testify. The prosecution contends that Yugoslav and Serbian forces were ordered by Milosevic to expel tens of thousands of Kosovo Albanians during the [...]

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The Iraqi Islamic Party , Iraq's largest Sunni political group, on Wednesday heavily criticized the committee drafting a new Iraq constitution and said that the same major disputes blocking a draft last week remain to be worked out. The group said the committee was biased and incompetent in its approach to resolve differences over federalism [...]

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