Saturday, Dec 20th
Last update10:11:42 AM GMT
The US has won a ruling at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against China's restrictions on the import of American DVDs and other media products. The WTO ruled that China's current policy of only allowing the goods to be imported by state-run organisations broke global trade agreements.
However, the WTO upheld China's limits on the distribution of US films, and made no ruling on Chinese censorship.
In his first few months after stepping down, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the "far left" agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney's White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush.
Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.
A settlement is expected to involve the disclosure to U.S. authorities of thousands of names of wealthy American clients suspected of using offshore accounts to conceal assets and evade taxes. Authorities had sought the names of 52,000 people, but it is unclear how many names might be revealed.
Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterroris.
An Iranian exile group accused the Obama administration Tuesday of betraying written U.S. promises to protect several thousand of its members confined in a camp north of Baghdad that was recently stormed by Iraqi forces.
The accusations against the United States, made at a news conference, called attention to an unusual situation created by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in which the American military, for the past six years, has been protecting a disarmed Iranian guerrilla force considered a terrorist group by the U.S. government.
The House Judiciary Committee released thousands of pages of new documents concerning the firing of nine US Attorneys under the Bush Administration — and they heavily implicate the office of onetime Bush adviser Karl Rove.
Now in a federal court in suburban Washington, a case is unfolding that gives us a practical sense of what an Obama-era rendition looks like.
Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager with a grade school education, is employed by Sima International, a Lebanon-based contractor that does work for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also has the unlikely distinction of being the first target of a rendition carried out on the Obama watch.
Sibel Edmonds gave a sworn deposition in which she testified to her knowledge of treasonous crimes and corruption involving current and former members of Congress and State and Defense Dept. officials. Given the nature of the deposition, the lines of questioning focused on Turkish espionage and services obtained through bribery and blackmail by Turkish officials and proxies. However, Edmonds has previously disclosed that the corruption involving U.S. officials also includes money laundering, trafficking in drugs, arms and nuclear secrets, U.S. support for Bin Laden/Al Qaeda, and obstruction of FBI investigations related to 9/11, before and after the attacks; she said these things came up “briefly” during the deposition. Edmonds learned of these things from wiretaps she listened to while working as a translator for the FBI in 2001-2002.
A bipartisan pair of governors is opposing a new Defense Department proposal to handle natural and terrorism-related disasters, contending that a murky chain of command could lead to more problems than solutions.
Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas (R), chairman of the National Governors Association, and Vice Chairman Gov. Joe Manchin (D) of West Virginia penned a letter opposing the Pentagon proposal, which they said would hinder a state's effort to respond to a disaster.
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