The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has abandoned plans to decrease the frequency of reporting requirements for the release of toxic chemicals by polluting companies, it was announced Thursday. The changes would have required polluters to report every other year rather than the current mandate of annual submissions. The EPA also asserted, however, that it will push next year for an increase in the amount of pollutants that triggers the requirement for companies to report, essentially exempting about one-third of 23,000 companies from the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) reporting established in the 1986 Emergency Planning & Community Right to Know Act.
Under existing standards, polluters must report any release over 500 pounds, while the proposed change would only require reporting after the release of 5,000 pounds. The EPA's move follows criticism from US Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who staunchly oppose the proposed changes. Lautenberg, who penned the Right to Know law, called the changes a "giveaway to corporate polluters at the cost of everyday Americans' health" and an "irresponsible policy stand."

The chemicals that must be reported under TRI requirements include DDT, mercury, PCBs and other chemicals that do not substantially dissipate. The lower TRI standard would exempt many companies in the mining, utility, oil, rubber, plastics, printing, textile, leather tanning and semiconductor industries.

The US District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana has meanwhile delivered a similar victory for the ESA, ordering a permanent injunction against a Louisiana law that would ban the sale of violent video games to minors. Judge James Brady made the ruling from the bench with no written opinion; in issuing a temporary injunction in August, he wrote "the evidence that was submitted to the legislature in connection with the bill that became the statute is sparse and could hardly be called in any sense reliable". Assistant Attorney General Burton Guidry said "We did everything we could to defend the law, but, as the judge said, the law was practically unenforceable as written". Outspoken video game critic Jack Thompson had drafted the law, although he later feuded with Guidry over the case and even accused Guidry of not adequately presenting the government's side.

Chinese authorities have executed the founder of a Chinese Christian church and two of his close associates for allegedly ordering the murders of several members of a rival religious sect, a lawyer for Xu Shuangfu said Wednesday. The death penalty apparently imposed last week on the former head of the Three Grades of Servants Church without any notification to his family or defense team is part of a crackdown by the government of China on underground religious organizations that authorities label as cults. Making the sects illegal prohibits them from recruiting members or raising money, so the churches go underground to worship. Xu's conviction and July 2006 sentencing stemmed from the 2002 murders of members of the Eastern Lightning Church, which attempted to steal followers away from the Three Grades of Servants Church. Christian groups say that 15 members of the Three Grades Church have been executed by Chinese authorities so far.

Xu's family does not claim that the murders never happened, but contends that his trial was wrought with flaws and included no physical evidence linking Xu to the deaths. Prosecutors instead relied on confessions of fellow church members, which Xu's lawyer says were garnered by torture. Earlier this year, the Falun Gong spiritual group, also banned by the Chinese government, alleged that thousands of its followers were being held in a Chinese "concentration camp" to be killed for organ-harvesting.

Saddam Hussein on Thursday rejected forensic evidence of mass graves presented by US experts in his genocide trial for the "Anfal" campaigns against ethnic Kurds in northern Iraq between 1987 and 1988. Hussein said that pictures of the graves are "irrelevant to the Anfal case" and that he "refutes all the testimonies submitted by the Americans" in the Anfal case, but expressed willingness to accept evidence offered by coalition countries other than the United States. Also on Thursday, Chief Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa admitted testimony of Michael Trimble, an American forensics expert with the US Army Corps of Engineers. Trimble offered an account of his discovery of corpses of hundreds of Kurdish women and children in three mass graves.

On Tuesday, Khalifa rejected an attempt by Hussein to bar testimony by American forensics expert Clyde Snow after Hussein demanded a neutral witness from a country that was not involved in the 2003 Iraq invasion. Hussein was sentenced to death earlier this month for crimes against humanity  committed in the Iraqi town of Dujail. An appeals panel is expected to rule on the verdict and sentence by mid-January 2007. Prosecutors hope to complete the Anfal trial before Hussein's execution. The Anfal trial has now been adjourned until Monday.

The UK High Court ruled Thursday that two British citizens charged with terrorism offenses can be extradited to the US to face terrorism charges. Haroon Rashid Aswat, wanted in the US on suspicion of setting up a terrorist training camp, and Babar Ahmad, wanted for conspiring to kill Americans and running a website used to fund terrorists and recruit al Qaeda members, had argued that they should not be extradited to the US because they would be mistreated or tried as enemy combatants. The extraditions were approved only after the US offered assurances that it would not seek the death penalty, try the suspects before military tribunals or declare them enemy combatants. Lord Justice John Laws dismissed the appeal and held that possible mistreatment by the US "would require proof of a quality entirely lacking here" and that the US is a country" in which the United Kingdom has for many years reposed the confidence not only of general good relations, but also of successive bilateral treaties consistently honoured."

Aswat was arrested in August 2005 by Zambian police and returned to the UK in connection with the July 7 London bombing attacks. He was later arrested under a US warrant on the suspicion of setting up a terrorist training camp in Oregon five years ago. Ahmad was indicted in the US in October 2004. Both extradition cases were heard under a "fast track" extradition procedure under the UK Extradition Act 2003 that decreases the burden of proof on certain countries, including the United States.

The settlement resolves the civil case entitled United States v. Jack Jacobo Michel, M.D., et al., which the government filed in 2004, alleging violations of the False Claims Act. The state of Florida joined the suit later that year.

The government alleged that in 1997, Larkin, then owned by Desnick, paid kickbacks to physicians in return for patient admissions. The United States contended that the primary recipient of the kickbacks was Jack Michel, who was paid for patient admissions to Larkin by himself and his brother, Dr. George Michel. Jack Michel purchased Larkin in 1998. In 2000, Desnick was a party to a $14 million settlement with the United States for a similar kickback scheme from 1992 to 2000 at another facility he owned, Doctors Hospital of Hyde Park in Chicago.

The United States also alleged in the Michel suit that from 1998 to 1999, Jack Michel, George Michel, Morris Esformes, Philip Esformes, Frank Palacios and Claudia Pace conspired to admit patients to Larkin for medically unnecessary treatment. The government asserted that some of these patients came from assisted living facilities owned and operated by Jack Michel, Morris Esformes and Philip Esformes.

"The Department of Justice is committed to vigorously litigating cases about conduct that undermines the integrity of the Medicare and Medicaid programs," said Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attorney General for the Department's Civil Division. "We will not tolerate health care providers who pay kickbacks or perform medically unnecessary treatments on elderly beneficiaries in order to generate Medicare and Medicaid payments."

The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the Florida Medicaid Fraud Control Unit. The case was handled by the Justice Department's Civil Division, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida in Miami and the Office of the Attorney General of the state of Florida.

The report also showed racial disparities among prisoners that are similar among men and women inmates. Among male prisoners ages 25-29, 8.1 percent of black men are in prison, while 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men are incarcerated. South Dakota accounted for the highest increase in inmate population with a rise of 11 percent, followed by Montana with 10.4 percent, and Kentucky with 7.9 percent. Georgia's prison population dropped the most with a decrease of 4.6 percent, followed by Maryland with a 2.4 percent drop, and Louisiana with a 2.3 percent decrease.