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 [...]

US Ambassador to the UN in Geneva Jackie Sanders told the annual meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors Wednesday that the IAEA could no longer ignore its 'statutory obligations' and must refer the question of Iran's compliance with IAEA regulations over to the UN Security Council . Sanders said that the [...]

The Chinese government paper China Daily Wednesday reported that the number of Chinese couples seeking a divorce in 2004 rose to 1.6 million, a dramatic increase over previous years attributed to a 2003 law reform that dropped the requirement that would-be divorcees obtain the permission of their employer. The paper quoted a Chinese official who [...]

The UK Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that a British high school decision to exclude from school a student wearing a jilbab, a traditional Muslim gown, was unlawful because the school denied 16-year-old Shabina Begum the right to manifest her religion. In its judgment , the court said that the school had a right to [...]