The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Thursday struck down as unconstitutional a state voting law that lists the election candidate of the winning party in the preceding state general election first on the ballot. The New Hampshire voting statute provides: "he first column shall contain the names of the candidates of the party which received [...]
President Bush on Thursday signed into law the Pension Protection Act of 2006 , which he called the "most sweeping reform" of US pension law since the enactment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974. The bill, passed by the Senate in August and by the House of Representatives in July, is [...]
A federal jury sitting in Raleigh, North Carolina on Thursday found David Passaro guilty of abusing a detainee in Afghanistan . The jury convicted Passaro on three misdemeanor counts of simple assault and one felony count of assault resulting in bodily injury, after prosecutors charged him with two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon [...]
Delaware must make their public documents available to residents of other states, according to a ruling handed down Wednesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Delaware's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) as written prevents non-residents from accessing Delaware public records, but the federal appeals court ruled that the statute violates the [...]
ACLU v. NSA, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, August 17, 2006 . Excerpt: Defendants assert that they cannot defend this case without the exposure of state secrets. This court disagrees. The Bush Administration has repeatedly told the general public that there is a valid basis in [...]
A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin to 24 years in prison for organizing a series of contract killings, including the 1998 murder of Vladimir Petukhov, the mayor of Nefteyugansk. Prosecutors filed the murder charges against Pichugin and others in April 2005. Puchugin's defense team had argued that the charges [...]
AP is reporting that US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has ruled that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program is unconstitutional and has ordered the National Security Agency to immediately cease using warrantless wiretaps to intercept communications of suspected terrorists when one party to the communication is outside the US. Taylor ruled that the NSA [...]
A federal jury in New Orleans on Thursday found Merck negligent for failing to warn doctors about the risks associated with taking the painkiller Vioxx and found that Merck knowingly misrepresented the risks involved. The verdict comes in the case of retired FBI agent Gerald Barnett who blamed Vioxx for his 2002 heart attack after [...]
Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon on Wednesday filed a notice of appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit , and told reporters that he intends to appeal a federal court ruling granting summary judgment to a class action lawsuit against Missouri that requires the state to provide inmates with transportation to [...]
The United Nations has opened an investigation into a suspected child prostitution ring in the Democratic Republic of Congo facilitated by UN peacekeepers and Congo soldiers, the UN Mission in DR Congo (MONUC) said Thursday. There have been claims that UN peacekeepers have aided the alleged prostitution ring by luring young girls to work as [...]
