State revenue sees increase in November.

Despite rising unemployment, strong individual incometax collections propelled state general revenue in November $24.4 million beyond collections in November 2007. …

SELF-ADVOCATES CONFAB SCHEDULED IN COLONIE.(CAPITAL REGION)

COLONIE The fifth annual self-advocacy conference will be held Thursday through Saturday at the Albany Marriott Hotel.

The conference theme is ``Don't just say it, do it!!! Self-Advocacy is alive!!!'' More than 600 self-advocates from all across the state …

Japanese lawmakers visit controversial Tokyo war shrine

Dozens of Japanese lawmakers paid respects Tuesday at a war shrine seen by many as an antagonistic symbol of Tokyo's militaristic past, one day after leaders of Japan and South Korea urged an end to disputes over their history.

The 160 lawmakers, including eight top government officials and their assistants, prayed at the Yasukuni Shrine, which reveres 2.5 million war dead, including executed war criminals, marking an annual spring festival, said organizer Yoshinobu Shimamura, a former agricultural minister. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda did not visit.

The visits have long strained Tokyo's relations with Asian neighbors who say the action defends Japan's …

Diala police chief rules out violence when election results announced.

Byline: AmR (P)

DIALA / Aswat al-Iraq: The Diala police chief on Sunday ruled out the eruption of acts of violence when the final results of the country's January 31 local elections are announced.

"I don't think acts of violence might break out in Diala, where police and army forces are intensively deployed, now that these forces have proved capable of maintaining security and stability all over the province," Maj. General Abdelhussein al-Shimari told Aswat …

Prosecutors formally charge Demjanjuk

German prosecutors have formally charged John Demjanjuk with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder.

Munich prosecutors say in a brief statement that the charges were filed on Monday. There is no immediate word on when a trial of the 89-year-old retired auto worker might …

German Panel Hears Nazi Art Case

BERLIN - A special German panel convened Thursday to hear the case of a Jewish man from the United States seeking the return of a collection of rare posters stolen from his father by the Nazis that could be worth $50 million.

Peter Sachs, of Sarasota, Fla., was only a year old in 1938 when his father's collection of 12,500 posters was seized and his family fled for the U.S.

Now 69, he is seeking the return of what remains of the collection - some 4,300 posters with an estimated value of between $10 million and $50 million. The posters are in the possession of Berlin's German Historical Museum.

The collection includes elaborate advertisements for exhibitions, cabarets and consumer products, as well as political propaganda - all rare, with only small original print runs.

The museum maintains that since Sachs' father, Hans Sachs, received about $50,000 compensation from the West German government in 1961, the posters should remain in its collection.

Sachs argues that the compensation was paid when it was assumed the collection was destroyed in the war, and that once his father found out that part of it had survived, he started trying to get access to it in the East German museum where it had ended up.

Hans Sachs died in 1974 without ever seeing the collection again. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German Historical Museum inherited the collection from its East German counterpart in 1990.

Peter Sachs is scheduled to testify behind closed-doors before the eight-member panel, a special commission set up in 2003 under an agreement between federal, state and local governments.

The panel's mandate is to mediate in disputes involving art looted by the Nazis and to make recommendations.

The Nazis looted an estimated 150,000 pieces of art from western Europe during World War II and some 500,000 pieces from eastern and central Europe.

New Jersey attorney Gary Osen, who is representing Sachs, said he was expecting a recommendation from the panel later in the day Thursday.

Raytheon Wins $4.3 Million Contract for On-Dock Rail Nuclear Detectors.

Under a $4.3 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN) is developing next-generation panels that can scan rail cars to detect nuclear weapons and other materials (see also Raytheon Company).

The new panels are an additional configuration in Raytheon's Advanced Spectroscopic portfolio, a series of panels that can be used in various ways to screen cars, trucks, cargo containers, and now rail cars at seaports, border crossings, and airports. Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems is developing the panels for the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office within DHS. The panels will be tested this summer in Tacoma, Wash.

Ports of …