American Electric Power (AEP) has settled a lawsuit for $4.6 billion with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , 12 environmental groups and eight northeastern states. The settlement is expected to be formally announced Tuesday, the same day the lawsuit was set to go to trial. Under the terms of the settlement, which must be approved [...]

Opponents of an Oregon law that would allow same-sex couples to enter into contractual domestic partnerships with the same state benefits as married couples did not get enough signatures to block the law , Oregon election officials said Monday. If opponents had collected the required number of signatures, the law would have been been put [...]

Current Pakistani president and military leader General Pervez Musharraf appointed General Ashfaq Kiyani as new deputy army chief Monday, in an apparent consummation of his promise to step down as head of the country's military if he won a third term as president. Elections were held Saturday, and Musharraf won a landslide victory, collecting 252 [...]

Intel has asked the European Commission (EC) to extend its October 8 deadline to respond to antitrust accusations prepared by the EC in July over Intel's price and rebate tactics, which the EC said had the effect of driving smaller companies, such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) out of the market. On Monday, an EU [...]

A Bangladesh court Monday convicted former Home Minister Mohammed Nasim of corruption and sentenced him to 13 years in jail. Nasim's wife was also sentenced in absentia to three years for aiding her husband in accumulating property through "dishonest means." The court ordered the seizure of 12.6 million taka (approximately $183,000) deemed "disproportionate" to Nasim's [...]

A Milan prosecutor charged former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with false accounting on Monday, alleging that his broadcasting company, Mediaset, incorrectly reported its costs in purchasing television rights to US films in a ploy to lower taxes in 2000. Berlusconi's lawyer has said his client is innocent because he was not involved with the [...]

Afghanistan has ended a three-year moratorium on the death penalty by executing 15 prisoners Sunday by firing squad at Pul-e-Charkhi , the country's largest prison, Afghanistan's chief of prisons said Monday. The executions are the second confirmed reports of executions being carried out in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. The [...]

Russian prosecutors know the identity of the person who shot Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya , but have yet to arrest or bring charges against the suspect, lead investigator Petros Garibyan said in an interview published in Novaya Gazeta Monday. Although a number of people have been arrested and charged as accomplices in her murder, none [...]

The International Court of Justice issued an opinion Monday resolving a maritime boundary dispute between Nicaragua and Honduras and granting possession of four small Caribbean islands to Honduras. Nicaragua filed the suit in 1999, claiming that no legal maritime border existed; Honduras claimed that the boundary had been determined by a 1906 arbitral award from [...]

The Bangladeshi government intends to establish a "truth commission" to bolster the economy following a judicial crackdown on business corruption, according to a Bangladesh Supreme Court lawyer drafting a proposal to establish the commission. The truth commission would offer pardons to business people who have been detained on corruption charges if they confess and return [...]