Feds go after Bernard Madoff’s riches

Federal prosecutors are seeking the forfeiture of Bernard Madoff’s four homes and other assets after Madoff’s guilty plea to masterminding a massive investment fraud. Madoff is in jail at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan after pleading guilty to operating on the largest Ponzi schemes in history.

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A Gay Marriage Solution: End Marriage?

When a Jewish boy turns 13, he heads to a temple for a deeply meaningful rite of passage, his bar mitzvah. When a Catholic girl reaches about the same age, she stands in front of the local bishop, who touches her forehead with holy oil as she is confirmed into a 2,000-year-old faith tradition.

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Pakistan to reinstate judges after protests

All judges sacked by Pakistan’s previous president, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, will be reinstated, Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani announced Monday after days of massive protests by lawyers demanding government action. “As per my commitment and the commitment of [President] Asif Ali Zardari, I announce the reinstatement of all deposed judges,” Gilani said in his address Monday

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Leftist claims El Salvador presidency

Mauricio Funes, a member of a political party that waged guerrilla war against the government 17 years ago, has claimed the presidency of El Salvador. “This is the happiest night of my life,” Funes told a jubilant crowd at his election headquarters Sunday night. “It’s also the night of greatest hope for El Salvador.” The FMLN party’s Funes had 51.12 percent of the vote, while the ARENA party’s Rodrigo Avila had 48.87 percent with 84 percent of the national ballots counted, the electoral commission said on its Web site

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In the Waterfront: The U.S. Prison for Iraq’s Worst Prisoners Prepares to Close

A distinct vibe emanates from behind the 15-ft.-high chain fences reinforced with rebar and rimmed by razor wire that encircle the so-called “Waterfront” compound at Camp Bucca. It’s different from the other compounds in this sprawling 100-acre, open-air U.S detention center close to the Kuwaiti border, the largest in Iraq, which houses a little over 10,000 of the 13,832 detainees currently in U.S custody

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UK lawmakers aim to ‘force’ Hamas talks

A group of British politicians is trying to force the government in London to talk to Hamas, the militant Palestinian movement considered a terrorist organization by the United Kingdom, one of the politicians told CNN. Baroness Jenny Tonge, a member of the House of Lords, met the political leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, in Syria along with other British politicians on Saturday, she said.

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GAO: Fake passports easy to get

A congressional investigation has exposed gaping holes in security eight years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, a government report says. An investigator used a false identification to obtain a U.S. passport and then used the passport to get an airline boarding pass and go through an airport security checkpoint, according to the Government Accountability Office

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Pakistan TV station reportedly blocked in parts of country

Pakistani television station GEO-TV has been shut down in locations across the country, according to the station’s managing director. Government officials have instructed cable operators to remove the channel from the airwaves or push it farther down in the channel order, Azhar Abbas said Saturday. The channel signal has been blocked in certain areas, but other cable operators are still carrying it

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U.S. reverses policy, drops ‘enemy combatant’ term

In a dramatic break with the Bush administration, the Justice Department on Friday announced it is doing away with the designation of "enemy combatant," which allowed the United States to hold suspected terrorists at length without criminal charges. In a court filing in Washington, the Justice Department said it is developing a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.

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