The country's parliament voted to back a bill backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's dominant United Russia party giving three judges the right to rule on cases involving terrorism, hostage-taking, armed insurrection, sabotage and civil disturbances.
The bill will go before Russia's upper house, the Federation Council where approval is expected to be a formality, before it becomes law.
The move came 15 years to the day since the adoption of Russia's first post-Soviet Constitution which reintroduced jury trials abolished by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
Critics said the move raised the spectre of a return to Soviet-style trials controlled solely by judges.
Russia scraps right to jury trial
Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion
The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.
TVNL Comment: The Fed answers to nobody. They own this nation. They are a private bank that is independent of any national authority.
Israeli drug smugglers hit Australia
ISRAELI drug lords are increasingly targeting Australia for ecstasy smuggling, according to confidential Israel Police intelligence that shows crime syndicates view it as a booming market for the party drug.
Israeli crime syndicates control a significant share of the global ecstasy trade and have a long history of supplying the Australian market.
Man Linked to Sept. 11 Hijackers Is Released
Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar, who is in charge of security, said that a man linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah militant network had been freed Thursday, along with two from a Thai separatist group and two Malaysians suspected of working for foreign intelligence groups.
Mr. Syed told reporters at Parliament that he believed that Yazid Sufaat, a Malaysian who the police suspected had provided lodging for two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was among them.
TVNL Comment: They never define "linked." Providing lodging is a pretty innocuous link.
Hypocrisy With One-World Impunity
For any nation to have a future its people must have real and growth-oriented jobs; along with job protection and benefits that do not drain the money that employees can earn. This principle has been under attack since the Tri-Lateral Commission held its first global meeting in 1973.
What is at stake now in the current battle over the continuation of the big-three automotive giants is not about the viability of their products but rather this concerns the imbalance between the failed leadership of those corporations, supported by the criminal- enterprise of government in league with the One-World Order, that is designed to eliminate real wages and benefits for those that produce the vehicles, while rewarding the corporations and the boards of directors for their complicity in bringing down these last remaining manufacturing giants in a place that is now devoid of the remaining home-grown jobs that once offered real possibilities to their employees.
California Rules to Cut Diesel Truck Pollution Called Most Sweeping in U.S.
The California Air Resources Board today approved two diesel truck regulations that will dramatically cut the largest source of diesel pollution in the state and are the first of their kind in the United States, according to Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The Air Resource Board estimates that the truck regulations are expected to save 9,400 lives between 2010 and 2025 and greatly reduce health care costs.
Leading lawyer calls for Rumsfeld prosecution
The President of the legal nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, has resumed calls for a formal prosecution of ex-Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld following revelations by a Congressional report that Rumsfeld was to blame for the Pentagon's policy allowing torture.
In a statement, he said that the report reaffirms findings he spelled out in his book published this September, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution. Ratner's group was the first to volunteer an attorney to meet with one of the CIA's "ghost detainees."
CIA Helped Shoot Down 15 Civilian Planes
With the help of CIA spotters, the Peruvian air force shot down 15 small civilian aircraft suspected of carrying drugs, in many cases without warning and within two to three minutes of being sighted, a U.S. lawmaker said Thursday.
CIA Torture Tapes Destoryed After Watchdog Concluded Methods Illegal
The CIA destroyed videotapes showing its agents subjecting high-level al-Qaeda detainees to waterboarding after the agency's inspector general issued a classified report in the spring of 2004 that concluded the interrogation methods used on the prisoners "appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture."
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