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WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously rejected the Justice Department's effort to expand the Chemical Weapons Convention's reach into garden-variety domestic crimes, throwing out the federal conviction of a Pennsylvania woman who used a chemical irritant to get back at a romantic rival. The Chemical Weapons Convention, implemented through a 1998 law, "deals with crimes of deadly seriousness," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, rejecting its use to prosecute a minor assault. The ruling maintained the government's ability to use the treaty when going after major crimes, including acts of terrorism. Prosecutors have invoked the treaty in domestic...

Note: The following text is a quote: Ali Al-Marri Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Provide Material Support to Al-Qaeda Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, 43, a dual national of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda. Al-Marri entered his guilty plea at a hearing this afternoon before Judge Michael M. Mihm in U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois. In so doing, al-Marri admitted that he agreed with others to provide material support or resources to al-Qaeda in the form of personnel, including himself, to work under al-Qaeda’s...

MADRID (Reuters) - An al Qaeda cell based in France planned a chemical attack on a U.S. naval base in Rota, Spain, newspaper ABC reported on Tuesday. Algerian Said Arif, extradited to France from Syria last year, has admitted his cell was plotting a chemical attack on the southern Spanish base controlled by the United States since 1953, the Spanish daily reported. The paper said Arif was considered a lieutenant of Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq. Zarqawi himself was accused of planning a chemical attack last year in his native Jordan, which authorities thwarted. Arif was...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Chinese officials maintain that a mysterious disease in pigs that has also infected and killed humans is an outbreak of swine flu, but the World Health Organization has recommended that further testing be conducted to identify the pathogen more precisely, and at least one U.S. scientist thinks it is possible a strain of Ebola virus could be involved. The disease, which has occurred predominately in China's Sichuan province, has infected 206 people, of which 38 have died and another 18 are critically ill. The Chinese Ministry of Health has said the disease is swine flu,...

HER dusty file was one of hundreds of thousands of documents stacked in a house in a wealthy neighbourhood of Baghdad. Asma Rasheed married a pilot, lived comfortably in the presidential compound of Saddam Hussein and directed a microbiology programme that was not supposed to exist. Rasheed’s light blue folder has emerged from a huge archive seized by forces loyal to Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, which opposed Saddam. The archive — a dark who’s who of Iraq — reveals the tiniest details of blandishments and humiliations by a paranoid regime that shared the Nazis’ obsession...

Empty warheads are not the heart of the story Zvi Bar'elThe discovery last Thursday of 12 empty chemical weapon warheads at the Ukhaider complex south of Baghdad created a great stir that died down almost immediately. The Ukhaider Ammunition Storage Area, one of the biggest in Iraq, which was bombed during the Gulf War, is not a secret site. Even the 122mm warheads were not unknown weapons to those monitoring the Iraqi arms program. The previous inspection team had already uncovered some before being kicked out of Iraq in 1998. If there was anything interesting about these warheads, it concerns...

Of course, the temptation is to gloat. To quietly sit and wait for the various Iraq defenders to come up with some explanation for the smoking gun. The dozen chemical warheads which Iraq and its friends assured us didn’t exist. The busloads of protesters headed to Washington, the leadership of the Democratic Party, dancing monkeys like Cheryl Crowe. It would be fun to stick a microphone in their faces and wait for them to stammer out a response. Because, admit it or not, they have all been shown to be idiots. The whole menagerie of them. With their resolutions and...

Dec 20, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Examples of omissions from Iraq's declaration to the U.N. Security Council about its weapons arsenal, according to the U.S. State Department: Anthrax and Other Undeclared Biological Agents -A previous U.N. inspection commission concluded that Iraq did not verifiably account for, at a minimum, 2,160 kg (4,752 pounds) of growth media. -This material, still unaccounted for, is enough to produce 26,000 liters of anthrax - three times the amount Iraq declared; 1,200 liters of botulinum toxin; and 5,500 liters of clostridium perfrigens - 16 times the amount Iraq declared. --- Ballistic Missiles...

White House calls chemical warhead discovery 'serious' WASHINGTON - The White House said Friday that chemical warheads found in Iraq had not been declared by President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government as required by U.N. rules, and called the discovery "troubling and serious." Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) stopped short of calling the weapons cache a breach of an anti-arms U.N. resolution, saying the United States has already found Saddam in violation of several U.N. rules. U.S. officials hope the discovery of 11 empty chemical warheads at a storage area 75 miles (120 kilometers) south...