Washington, D.C.

Interior computers to come back online

The Interior Department will go back online after an appeals court Wednesday blocked a judge’s ruling that ordered most of the department’s computers disconnected from the Internet.

The shutdown, which began March 15, disrupted public access to Interior Department Web pages, land managers’ communications, disbursement of mineral royalties to states, and education in Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.

Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., was among the school affected by the Internet shutdown.

An Interior Department spokesman said officials were trying to determine how long it would take to get the systems back online.

United Nations

U.S. seeks crackdown on weapons trade

The United States presented a U.N. resolution Wednesday aimed at cracking down on the international black market in weapons of mass destruction, a shadowy network partly unearthed by a string of nuclear scandals.

The proposal is aimed at extending controls to “non-state actors” — crooked scientists, black marketeers and terrorists — who might slip through the cracks of current weapons treaties that focus on governments.

It was unclear when a vote might take place.

Las Vegas

Anti-tax pitchman indicted

A federal grand jury indicted an anti-tax author and two others Wednesday for helping thousands of taxpayers file bogus returns.

Irwin Schiff, who wrote “The Federal Mafia: How It Illegally Imposes and Unlawfully Collects Income Taxes,” argues there is no legal requirement to pay income taxes.

Prosecutors say he is responsible for nearly 5,000 tax returns that fraudulently reported no income. These “zero returns” included zeros on every line related to income and expenses and often claimed a full refund of all federal taxes withheld.

After filing the “zero returns,” many of Schiff’s clients faced IRS audits and tax collections.

The indictment says Schiff’s business, Freedom Books, generated $3.7 million from 1997 to 2002. Schiff, 76, didn’t report any income on federal tax returns from 1987 to 2002.