WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- A federal judge in Washington delayed a ruling Friday for a hearing on the destruction of two CIA tapes.

U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy said he would decide later on the motion by lawyers for Yemeni detainees in Guantanamo.

Kennedy seemed to be supportive of the U.S. Justice Department argument that it should be allowed to conduct its own investigations first, The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) reported.

"Why should the court not permit the Department of Justice to do just that?" Kennedy asked David H. Remes, one of the lawyers seeking the hearing.

Remes suggested the Justice Department has an inevitable conflict of interest.

"Plainly, the government wants only the foxes guarding the henhouse," he said in court papers.

In 2005, Kennedy ordered the government to preserve evidence on the mistreatment of Guantanamo detainees.

At the hearing, a Justice Department lawyer argued the order is irrelevant in this case because the tapes were of interrogations at CIA "black sites" of two men who were later transferred to Guantanamo, The Washington Post reported.

Gates chides Congress on war funding

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates Friday criticized Congress for funding the Iraq and Afghan wars in a piecemeal fashion, saying it undermines progress.

Gates told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that though he welcomed the $70 million funding plan approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, "it is important to note that it represents only a partial solution."

"I'm also very concerned that funding the war in fits and starts is requiring us to make short-term plans and short-term decisions to forgo needed actions and to put at risk critical procurement, training and their activities important to deploying a ready and effective force," Gates added.

Gates noted the House measure, which U.S. President George Bush has indicated he will sign, amounts to less than half the funding sought for global military operations.

"In the new year, we will again face the risk of running out of money," Gates said.

Israel-Syria talk prospects hit impasse

JERUSALEM, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Diplomats say attempts to open diplomatic channels between Israel and Syria have faltered despite the efforts of Turkey and Germany to facilitate the contacts.

Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported Israel attempted to open direct contact with Syrian President Bashar Assad but reached an impasse over agenda items for such direct communication.

"The bottom line was a negative one," a European diplomat told the paper.

At a Thursday press conference, U.S. President George Bush said he has lost patience with Syria and again warned Damascus to stay out of Lebanon, which is in the midst of a presidential election crisis.

"My patience ran out on President Assad a long time ago," Bush said. "The reason why is because he houses Hamas, he facilitates Hezbollah, suiciders go from his country into Iraq and he destabilizes Lebanon."

Teen dies before insurer OKs liver

NORTHRIDGE, Calif., Dec. 21 (UPI) -- The mother of a California teenager who died waiting for a liver transplant blamed an insurance company that denied coverage of the operation for the death.

While Philadelphia insurance company Cigna reversed an earlier decision and approved coverage of the transplant, the decision came just hours after 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan had died.

"She passed away and the insurance (company) is responsible for this," her mother, Hilda Sarkisyan of Northridge, Calif., told the Los Angeles Daily News.

About 150 teenagers and nurses staged a rally for Nataline Sarkisyan at UCLA Medical Center, where the girl was in critical condition. Cigna, earlier denied coverage of the transplant, saying there was no medical evidence it would work for the girl, whose liver failed as she suffered from leukemia, the Daily News said.

Major quake hits New Zealand town

GISBORNE, New Zealand, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Storeowners in the New Zealand city of Gisborne surveyed the damage Friday from a major earthquake that struck overnight.

The manager of one store, Smiths City, told The Dominion Post, a Wellington newspaper, that employees had had to deal with would-be looters "after a cheap Christmas." Storeowners also struggled with shop floors full of broken glass, shattered windows, downed light fixtures and overturned displays.

The quake, measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale, hit Thursday night. There were few reports of serious injuries, with 15 people treated at a local hospital, a building that suffered water damage from the quake.

One elderly woman collapsed immediately after the quake and suffered a fatal heart attack.

Gisborne, with a population of less than 35,000, is on Poverty Bay on the east coast of the North Island. The city is in an area of a sparsely settled district of mountain and forest.