The Delaware Supreme Court has upheld a lower court's ruling declaring Walt Disney Co. directors and two former executives not liable for the approval of a $130 million severance package for former Disney president Michael Ovitz , after serving only 14 months as president. Several shareholders originally sued former CEO Michael Eisner , former general [...]
Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock said Friday that there is no evidence for allegations made in an Australian magazine that accused Taliban member David Hicks has been tortured during his four-year detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba . The allegations were made in an article in the Monthly Magazine by Alfred McCoy, a history professor at [...]
US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) introduced a new NSA oversight bill to the committee Thursday modifying his earlier proposal to require the NSA to seek FISC approval before conducting surveillance. The new proposal, a compromise plan written with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), has three major features: in a major concession to the [...]
Lord Lloyd of Berwick , the retired law lord whose 1996 report on British terrorism law underpinned the Labour Government's 2000 Terrorism Act , has condemned attempts by the government to amend the Human Rights Act 1998 with exceptions as "sinister" and warned that parliament should be wary of deviating from the spirit of its [...]
The US military has denied allegations of Guantanamo Bay soldiers desecrating copies of the Koran during a May clash between prisoners and guards after four prisoners attempted suicide. Military officials on Thursday stood by their original version of events , saying that Joint Task Force troops were lured into a trap by staged suicide attempts, [...]
Texas Governor Rick Perry has said that he plans to create a virtual border watch program , installing night-vision cameras along the Mexican border and streaming live video on the Internet to aid in the state's effort to crack down on illegal immigration . The $5 million plan will make the images available to anyone [...]
The US Senate on Thursday rejected a bill that would have given Native Hawaiians self-governance powers in line with those accorded to Native Americans. The Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act was rejected by a margin of 56-41 in a procedural vote Thursday, falling short of the necessary 60 votes to proceed with a final vote [...]
Russia has extradited Dragan Zelenovic , a Bosnian Serb wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to Bosnia, according to the Bosnian war crimes court on Friday. Bosnia plans to transfer Zelenovic to the ICTY "immediately" , possibly within 36 hours. Russia handed Zelenovic, wanted for rape and torture during Bosnia's [...]
The Supreme Court of Virginia has ordered a new trial for death row inmate Daryl Atkins, instructing the trial court to determine whether Atkins is mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for the death penalty after the 2002 US Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia declaring capital punishment for the mentally retarded unconstitutional. Atkins had [...]
Text of a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney from US Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, June 7, 2006 . Excerpt: I was surprised, to say the least, that you sought to influence, really determine, the action of the Committee without calling me first, or at least calling me at some [...]
