The Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Assn. is no longer using payments from legal seminars and workshops to finance association functions, such as retirement parties and gifts, court officials said......The association will now accept money from only the 600 judges who are members and who pay $10 a month in dues directly from their paychecks, Bennett said. The changes in operation haven't put to rest the 7-year-old allegations of wrongdoing that prompted presiding Judge James A. Bascue to order the audit in February 2001.A handful of litigants had complained that the financial relationship among the judges, attorneys and some court-appointed officials led to unfavorable judgments in family court. Beverly Hills attorney and taxpayer advocate Richard I. Fine said Tuesday the only way the association can redeem itself is to repay to the court all of the money it misappropriated over the years. "I have great respect for the legal system, and it pains me that the integrity of the judicial system should be called into question for something like this," Fine said.

This article was published by the Los Angeles Times on April 3, 2002

The White House has dismissed speculations that the US is considering economic sanctions to force Israel into freezing its West Bank settlement activity. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Thursday that a remark made by deputy spokesman Robert Wood on Wednesday had been misinterpreted. ....Israel has faced strong opposition from US President Barack Obama's administration over its planned construction of some 20 'Jewish-only' apartments in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The US has also issued a stiff warning to Israel against to building settlements in an area known as E-1, which lies between Jerusalem (al-Quds) and the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, saying any change in the status quo in E-1 would be "extremely damaging" and even "corrosive".

Years of state and federal neglect have hobbled the nation's unemployment system just as a brutal recession has doubled the number of jobless Americans seeking aid. In a program that values timeliness above all else, decisions involving more than a million applicants have been slowed, and hundreds of thousands of needy people have waited months for checks.

Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, which lost $55bn in 2008, between them paid 1,400 employees bonuses of $1m or more each, according to a New York state report, released on Thursday, on banks propped up with taxpayer funds. The study, compiled by Andrew Cuomo, New York attorney-general, showed that JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which both finished in the black last year, paid the most million-dollar bonuses - 1,626 and 953, respectively.

As July marks the deadliest month for NATO since the Afghanistan invasion, US Vice-President Joe Biden hints worse is still to come in conflict with Taliban. Biden in an interview said Thursday that "there are more to come" in volatile Helmand province where US and British forces have lost dozens of their soldiers in less than three weeks. Biden insisted in a pragmatic approach that "more loss of life was inevitable" in the war-ravaged country. ......However, he told a BBC reporter that the war in Afghanistan was 'in the national interest' of the US and Britain......Civilians, however, have been the main victims of violence in Afghanistan particularly in the troubled southern and eastern provinces where the main fighting is going on. They have been killed by both militants' roadside, car and suicidal bomb blasts in their fight against US-led forces as well as by indiscriminate counterinsurgent attacks and assaults on ill-confirmed militant hideouts carried out by coalition forces. The spiraling civilian casualties have sparked public outrage and constituted a moot point between Kabul and Washington.

Switzerland has called on the Israeli government to halt the construction of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Switzerland "is deeply concerned about the destruction of Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem near the old town and the planned eviction of Palestinian families," the Swiss Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. According to the statement, East Jerusalem is an integral part of the Palestinian territories and under international humanitarian law Israel must protect the local civilian population. "There is no military necessity that could justify the destruction of these houses or the evictions of Palestinian families," the statement added. ....The settlements are built on the land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war and are in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says the occupying power is not allowed to transfer citizens from its own territory to the occupied territory.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has arrived in Argentina as many took to the streets to protest his visit to the Latin American country. Lieberman's visit to Argentina is the latest leg of his 10-day tour of South American states for what the Israeli foreign ministry has described as countering Iran's growing inroad into Latin American countries. In the capital, Buenos Aires, several hundred protesters demonstrated against his visit and Israeli policies in the Middle East, AP reported. ....In response to Israel's request for a change in stance toward Iran over its nuclear program, the Brazilian foreign minister defended Tehran's development of nuclear technology for "exclusively non-military" purposes and within a "verifiable" framework. The Brazilian official then took an apparent swipe at Israel over its blunt refusal to sign the NPT. "Brazil would like all countries to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty" and wants to see "a Middle East free of nuclear weapons." Israel, which is believed to be the Middle East's sole possessor of nuclear warheads, has shrugged off requests to join the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory. Iran and Brazil have maintained increasingly close diplomatic and trade ties as part of a trend in Latin America that has caused Israel and its staunch ally, the United States, to worry.

The world is abuzz with the accusations made by senior Fatah member Farouk Kaddoumi (Abu Al Lutf), against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and former security minister Mohammad Dahlan for having allegedly conspired with former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to get rid of Yasser Arafat in 2004. Speaking to an Arabic satellite channel from Jordan, Kaddoumi revealed the contents of a secret document - apparently shown to him personally by Arafat - regarding a meeting between Sharon, Abbas, Dahlan, U.S. undersecretary of state William Burns and a number of CIA officials. The meeting was aimed at eliminating Arafat and Hamas leaders Abdul Aziz Rantisi (assassinated by Israel in April 2004), Esmail Haniya and Mahmoud Zahar. Kaddoumi said he advised Arafat to flee Ramallah, seeing that the death threat was serious, but the ageing Arafat, who had been confined to his office in Ramallah since 2001, curtly refused.

Both the U.N. and Amnesty International found that Israeli Defense Forces killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and destroyed thousands of Gaza Strip homes in numerous attacks and a sustained aerial bombing campaign. They also revealed evidence of Israel using artillery, white incendiary phosphorus, and other indiscriminate weapons in densely populated areas. Some witnesses even accused Israeli forces of using Palestinians as "human shields." Hamas rocket attacks against Israel were also considered war crimes.

A cruise ship (The Voyager of the Seas carrying dozens of victims of swine flu among its 5,000 passengers and crew docked in France today on its way from the Italian port city of Naples to Marseille, French authorities said. 60 crew members were diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, and 70 more crew members showed signs of the disease, local authorities said in a statement today.People infected with swine flu are being treated and will stay on board of the "Voyager of the Seas" liner, which docked at Villefranche in southern France this morning and will resume its journey on Friday evening. All other crew members will also stay on board, though the passengers - 3,600 people - will be allowed to go on land during the day.

A French company is taking Google Maps to court for unfair competition, seeking 500,000 euros (706,000 dollars) in damages from the US-based Internet giant, a judicial official said Wednesday. Bottin Cartographes has lodged a complaint with the Paris commercial court against Google France and its parent company Google Inc. for providing free web mapping services to some businesses. The French company provides the same services for a fee and claims the Google strategy is aimed at undercutting competitors by temporarily swallowing the full cost until it gains control of the market....Hearings are set to begin on October 16.