July 13 (Bloomberg) -- UBS AG, the largest Swiss bank by assets, is in talks with the U.S. government to settle a lawsuit seeking the names of 52,000 American account holders suspected of using Swiss secrecy laws to evade taxes.

The bank agreed with the U.S. and Swiss governments to seek a settlement and postpone an evidentiary hearing today in a Miami courtroom, according to a court filing. The U.S. sued UBS on Feb. 19, a day after the bank agreed to pay $780 million to defer prosecution for helping wealthy Americans evade taxes.

Under that agreement, UBS also agreed to an unprecedented breach of Swiss secrecy laws by giving the Internal Revenue Service data on more than 250 accounts. Switzerland, which supports UBS in the case, said the U.S. push for data on 52,000 other accounts is a threat to its sovereignty and would force the bank to violate Swiss criminal laws protecting bank secrecy.

“This adjournment gives people at very high levels of both governments time to get involved and consider the implications of this litigation,” said Bryan Skarlatos, a tax lawyer at Kostelanetz & Fink LLP in New York. “The symbolic value of this case is huge. It’s King Kong versus Godzilla. It’s the IRS versus bank secrecy jurisdictions.”

KABUL (AP) — Afghanistan's government has revised a law that stirred an international outcry because it essentially legalized marital rape, officials said Thursday. The new version no longer requires a woman submit to sex with her husband, only that she do certain housework.

The changes, which parliament is expected to approve, likely reflect a calculation by President Hamid Karzai that his reputation as a reformer is more important than support from conservative Shiites who favored the original bill.

Presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada said the revisions show that Karzai has followed through on a pledge made in April to expunge the offensive parts of the marriage law, which applies only to minority Shiite Muslims.

Women's rights activists welcomed the new draft, but many said the government had not done enough and that little will change in day-to-day life.

"We need a change in customs, and this is just on paper. What is being practiced every day, in Kabul even, is worse than the laws," said Shukria Barakzai, a lawmaker and vocal women's rights advocate.

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The Associated Press: Afghanistan tones down contentious marriage law

AP - A terror suspect who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide support to al-Qaida will serve about a year in prison and then be deported to Canada.

U.S. District John R. Tunheim sentenced 35-year-old Mohammed Abdullah Warsame (wur-SAH'-mee) on Thursday to 92 months in prison, but gave him credit for the time he has already spent in custody.

Warsame has spent over 5 1/2 years in solitary confinement at a maximum-security prison in Minnesota while awaiting trial.

Prosecutors had sought a longer prison sentence.

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AP - A U.S.-trained Pakistani scientist accused of helping al-Qaida and shooting at FBI agents may be forced to appear in court Monday when a judge is to consider if she is competent to stand trial.

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BAGHDAD — Popular support for Iraq’s democratic institutions is being undermined steadily by official corruption, yet the country has no comprehensive anticorruption law.



Moises Saman for The New York Times: American soldiers, in action in Baghdad, are to leave all urban areas by the end of the month.

The country’s economy is dependent almost entirely upon oil revenue, but because there is no single law regulating the industry, there is widespread confusion about investment, production and lines of authority.

And parts of northern Iraq continue to be beset by ethnic and sectarian violence that could engulf the rest of the country in a new wave of warfare, but there is little prospect of a political resolution being offered any time soon to settle competing claims in the disputed province of Kirkuk.

Read the entire article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/wo...html?ref=world

AFP - Afghanistan's Taliban militant group on Sunday denied any involvement in the kidnapping of a New York Times reporter who has escaped to freedom after seven months in captivity.

David Rohde and a local reporter, who were abducted outside of Kabul along with their driver, "just walked over the wall of the compound" where they were being held captive in Pakistan's remote North Waziristan region, Rohde's wife Kristen Mulvihill told the Times after speaking with her husband.

The Taliban, responsible for most such kidnappings in Afghanistan as part of an insurgency they are waging against the Kabul government, said the group was not involved in the abduction.

"Even at that time when they were kidnapped we had not claimed their kidnapping," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location.

"And now... we are not aware of how they were freed or escaped. We're not involved at all and we do not know who had kidnapped them," the rebel spokesman said.

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Reuters - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear an appeal by five convicted Cuban spies who argued that their trial should have been moved out of Miami because of a biased jury pool.

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AFP - The first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be transferred for a civilian trial on US soil pleaded not guilty to taking part in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa.

"Not guilty" answered Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, when Federal Court Judge Loretta Preska asked how he pleaded.

Ghailani, a native of Tanzania, had been held at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison since September 2006 on charges of participating in the August 7, 1998 bombing of US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.
He could face the death penalty if found guilty.

The trial is a first step for President Barack Obama's politically delicate plan to close the controversial prison and move all remaining prisoners to the US justice system or to their home countries.

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AP - The three gunmen forced the car carrying the Hindu filmmaker to stop along the bumpy street, then injected him and his driver with a sedative.

The driver woke up a few hours later. The filmmaker was gone.

Six months later, in April, Satish Anand was recovered in Bannu in northwest Pakistan, according to an official involved in negotiating for his release. He is one of the most prominent Pakistanis yet to be abducted, and militants are suspected.

The rise in kidnappings comes as a floundering economy leads more people to commit crime in this Muslim-majority country of 170 million people. It's also a result of the overall erosion of security as Pakistan faces spreading Islamist militancy. Criminals are suspected in most kidnappings, but the Taliban and other militant groups are thought to earn a slice of the money — possibly millions of dollars, officials say.

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AP - Two men have pleaded guilty in Miami to federal fraud charges involving the supply of prohibited Chinese ammunition to the Afghan military.

David Packouz and Alexander Podrizki on Tuesday admitted involvement in a scheme by U.S. defense contractor AEY Inc. to conceal the Chinese origin of ammunition for Afghanistan. AEY had a $298 contract with the Pentagon to supply the ammunition, and authorities say they falsely claimed it came from Albania.

Packouz was vice president of AEY and Podrizki was a company agent in Albania. They each face a maximum of five years in prison.

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African states are giving away vast tracts of farmland almost for free, with the only benefits consisting of vague promises of jobs and infrastructure, says a new report

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Reuters - An Iranian court will hear Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi's appeal against her eight-year prison sentence for espionage on Sunday, her lawyer said on Saturday.

The 32-year-old freelance reporter was detained three months ago, and sentenced on April 18 on charges of spying for the United States, Iran's arch enemy.

The media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has said her conviction was a warning to foreign journalists working in Iran ahead of its presidential election in June.

The case could complicate Washington's efforts at reconciliation with the Islamic Republic after three decades of mutual mistrust.

The judiciary said on Tuesday the higher court would meet in a session closed to the public, but did not announce a date.

Saberi's lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi told Reuters the hearing would be on Sunday. "The verdict could come next week or any other time. It is not clear when," he said.

Khorramshahi has expressed optimism that Saberi will be acquitted or have her sentence reduced, after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad publicly called on the judiciary to ensure she was granted her full legal rights.

Saberi's father Reza, 68, said he did not know whether he would be allowed to attend the proceedings.

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Reuters - Two Sudanese detainees facing military trials in Guantanamo Bay are "good candidates for repatriation," a U.S. military lawyer who represents one of them said in Khartoum Thursday.

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The Obama Justice Department has released four memos detailing the harsh techniques used on some detainees during the Bush administration.* The memos - three written in 2005 and another in 2002 - give legal support for various coercive techniques and conclude that the CIA’s methods were not “cruel, inhuman or degrading” under international law.

However, the memos give specific authorization for such questionable tactics pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation.

President Obama assured CIA agents that those who used harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects “relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice” during the Bush era will not be prosecuted.

For further information, please click here and here.

AP - The sole surviving Somali pirate from the hostage-taking of an American ship captain arrived in New York on Monday, smiling for a gaggle of cameras and reporters as federal agents led him into custody to face charges in the attack.

Abduhl Wali-i-Musi (AHB'-dul wahl-ih-MOO'-sih) was handcuffed and had a chain wrapped around his waist. His left hand was heavily bandaged from the wound he suffered during the skirmish on the ship two weeks ago.

The smiling teenager seemed poised as he entered a federal building in a rainstorm, but he didn't say anything in response to reporters' shouted questions about whether he had any comment about the pirate episode.

Wali-i-Musi is the first person to be tried in the United States on piracy charges in more than a century. He was flown from Africa to a New York airport and taken into custody ahead of a court hearing Tuesday.

A law enforcement official familiar with the case said that the teenager was being charged under two obscure federal laws that deal with piracy and hostage-taking. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been announced.

The teenager's arrival came on the same day that his mother appealed to President Barack Obama for his release. She says her son was coaxed into piracy by "gangsters with money."

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Spanish Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido has declined to open an investigation in Spain’s National Court into whether six top Bush Administration officials sanctioned torture at Guantanamo Bay. While Spain’s courts do have jurisdiction in the case of war crimes and torture under the doctrine of “universal justice.” *Conde-Pumpido declared that the most proper forum for such an investigation would be in United States’ court system, not Spain’s.

The “Bush Six”, as they have come to known, have been accused of using legal opinions to advise the Bush Administration that it would be acceptable to ignore the Geneva Conventions and narrowly defining which interrogation techniques constituted torture. They are named in a complaint filed by several human rights lawyers.

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, who is presiding over the case, is most well-known for indicting Chilean ruler Augusto Pinochet over the objections of prosecutors. However, Conde-Pumpido is Spain’s top law-enforcement official and would have the final say. A formal announcement is expected April 17.

For more information, click here.

President Obama recently met as many as 34 leaders of democratically elected nations of the Western Hemisphere to consider and discuss an array of issues that directly affect them. *These issues include the current economic crisis, energy issues, climate change, and personal security. This meeting was held at the Summit of the Americas from April 17–19 in the port of Spain, in Trinidad and Tobago.* Recently, the frequency of violent activities along the US- Mexican border has drastically increased, forcing the various Central American nations and the US to spend as much as $1.4 billion in order to enhance law-enforcement training and military equipment, as well as to improve intelligence cooperation.
President Obama also announced that he will seek US senate ratification of an inter-American arms trafficking treaty designed to stop the flow of illegal firearms and ammunition to drug cartels and other destructive groups in the Western Hemisphere. The leaders believe that by taking these drastic steps, the illicit transnational arms market that fuels the violence associated with drug trafficking, terrorism, and international organized crime will diminish. In order to further assist this effort, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced the appointment of Alan Bersin, a former federal prosecutor, to coordinate efforts to reduce drug-related crime along the US-Mexican border.
For more information, please click here.

Reuters - An Iranian-American journalist accused in Iran of spying for the United States has been sentenced to eight years in jail, her lawyer said on Saturday, five days after she was put on trial.

An Iranian judiciary official, quoted by the ISNA news agency, confirmed the sentencing of Roxana Saberi, a U.S.-born freelance reporter who has worked for the BBC and National Public Radio (NPR).

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was very disappointed by the sentencing and would raise the case with Tehran.

Saberi's jailing could become a source of U.S.-Iranian tension at a time when Washington is trying to reach out to the Islamic Republic following three decades of mutual mistrust.

The judiciary earlier this week said Saberi went on trial on Monday at a Revolutionary Court, which handles security cases.

"She has been sentenced to eight years ... I will appeal," lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi told Reuters.

ISNA quoted the unnamed judiciary official as saying: "Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Roxana Saberi to eight years for espionage. She can appeal the sentence."

Her father, Reza Saberi, told the NPR that his daughter had been coerced into statements that she later retracted.

"She was deceived," he said. "She is quite depressed about this matter and she wants to go on a hunger strike. And if she does, she is so frail it can be very dangerous to her health."

The United States has called the charges against Saberi "baseless" and demanded her immediate release.

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AP - A Marine who fled to Mexico shortly before he was charged with killing a pregnant colleague in North Carolina returned to the U.S. on Friday.

Cpl. Cesar Laurean, 22, was extradited to face a murder charge in the death of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, 20, of Vandalia, Ohio, said FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson.

Investigators believe he fled just hours before Lauterbach's charred remains were found buried in his backyard in January 2008.

Laurean was taken to the Onslow County jail on Friday evening, county Sheriff Ed Brown said in a statement. Earlier, Onslow County District Attorney Dewey Hudson said he expected Laurean to appear in court Monday.

Mexican authorities captured Laurean just over a year ago in the small town of Tacambaro, Mexico. Thoreson said she wasn't sure where Laurean entered the United States because several agencies were involved and plans changed several times during the day.

Someone arrested on a felony charge must have a first-appearance hearing within 96 hours, Hudson said.

Laurean was charged with first-degree murder after Lauterbach's remains were found in a fire pit behind the home he shared with his wife and daughter in Jacksonville.

Lauterbach, who was eight months pregnant, worked with Laurean at nearby Camp Lejeune. She had accused him of rape, but tests later confirmed he wasn't the father of her unborn child.

Defense attorney Dick McNeil said he hasn't been contracted by federal officials and has heard from Laurean's family but not Laurean. McNeil said he expects his client to plead not guilty.

Hudson agreed not to seek the death penalty so Mexico would consider returning Laurean.

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AP - A U.S. immigration appeals board on Thursday denied a request to reopen the deportation case of John Demjanjuk, who is wanted in Germany to face accusations that he served as a Nazi death camp guard. Meanwhile, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Demjanjuk's only avenue of appeal at the moment, asked the Justice Department and Demjanjuk's attorneys to provide it more information.

CLEVELAND – A U.S. appeals court wants to see details of a medical report indicating that John Demjanjuk, who is wanted in Germany to face accusations he served as a Nazi death camp guard, is healthy enough to make that trip from Ohio safely.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is Demjanjuk's current legal avenue in his effort not to be deported.

The Cincinnati-based appeals court halted his deportation Tuesday with an emergency order shortly after immigration officers carried him moaning from his home in a wheelchair to start him on his journey to Germany. He was detained in a holding area of the Cleveland offices of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but was allowed to return to his suburban Cleveland home a few hours later. The appeals court's deportation stay remains in effect.

On Thursday, the appeals court said the Department of Justice must provide a copy of the doctor's report used to determine Demjanjuk is healthy enough to travel. It also asked for the government's plans for taking Demjanjuk to Germany.

The court wants Demjanjuk's lawyers to answer the government's claim that the issue is deportation and that the appeals court lacks jurisdiction. The Department of Justice said it believes the Board of Immigration Appeals, which last week denied Demjanjuk an emergency stay and Thursday denied a request to reopen his case, is the final authority in deportation cases.

An arrest warrant in Germany claims Demjanjuk (pronounced dem-YAHN'-yuk) was an accessory to some 29,000 deaths during World War II at the Sobibor camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Once in Germany, he could be formally charged in court.

Family and lawyers representing the 89-year-old Demjanjuk have said that flying him to Germany would amount to torture and that he might not even survive the flight.

A Division of Immigration Health Services doctor who recently examined Demjanjuk determined he is "medically stable" to travel from the United States to Germany, but the family and Demjanjuk's lawyer on Wednesday questioned whether all information has been released about the flight being potentially lethal.

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On Thursday April 9, the French National Assembly rejected an Internet piracy bill that punished repeat illegal downloaders. The bill won preliminary parliamentary approval but was eventually defeated by a vote of 21-15. Under the bill, a first time offense of downloading illegal material would be punished by a warning and a second time offense would be punished by up to a one-year ban. The bill was supported by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry and opposed by the UFC-Que Choisir, a French consumer interest group.
Other nations in Europe have been struggling with balancing the protection of copyright materials and privacy concerns. In January 2008, the European Court of Justice found that telecommunication companies in Spain did not have to share the identities of Internet users suspected of illegal file sharing. A Belgium court in June 2007, on the other hand, ordered a file sharing website to filter users found sharing copyrighted material.
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