
Federal judges across the nation are shouldering criminal caseloads that vary widely in size, sometimes even among judges in the same courthouse, according to a new study.

The Obama administration is opposing a Jewish group's bid to have civil fines levied against Russia for failing to obey a court order to return its historic books and documents — a dispute that has halted the lending of Russian artworks for exhibit in the United States.
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell by 12,000 last week, a hopeful signal that the job market may be improving.
An accused member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was arraigned Monday in federal court in Washington following his weekend extradition to the U.S. on charges of hostage-taking and terrorism.
A retired naval officer honored for helping rescue fellow Pentagon workers in the 2001 terrorist attack was sentenced Monday to 3½ years in prison for defrauding the Sept. 11 victims compensation fund.
Opponents of President Barack Obama's stem cell policy who lost a lawsuit aimed at stopping the research are appealing.
The former head of the White House Office of Special Counsel in the George W. Bush administration can withdraw his guilty plea to a misdemeanor contempt of Congress charge because he did not realize he could go to jail, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
Thirty-six years after Richard Nixon testified to a grand jury about the Watergate break-in that drove him from office, a federal judge on Friday ordered the secret transcript made public.

A lawsuit that had threatened to end the Obama administration's funding of embryonic stem-cell research was thrown out Wednesday, allowing U.S. researchers to continue to use them over protests that the work relies on destroyed human embryos.