A federal judge on Friday approved a $153 million settlement between tax firm KPMG and 200 of its former clients in a class action lawsuit based on illegal tax shelters sold by the firm from 1996 to 2002 which were categorized as abusive by the IRS . The settlement, preliminarily approved by US District Court [...]
Canadian Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday that he will ask MPs to vote this fall on a federal law permitting same-sex marriage . The Liberal Party of former prime minister Paul Martin, which now controls only 103 of 308 seats in the House of Commons, passed the bill last summer, making Canada [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Friday sentenced Joseph Serugendo to six years in prison for direct and public incitement to commit genocide and persecution as a crime against humanity under a plea agreement where the ICTR dropped the more serious charges of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and complicity to commit genocide [...]
Nearly 200,000 people rallied in Kathmandu outside the palace of King Gyanendra Friday in a protest organized by Nepal's Maoist rebel insurgency to pressure the new government into speeding up plans to elect a special assembly to draft a new Nepal constitution. Krishna Bahadur Mahara , the Maoist negotiator with the recently reinstated parliament, told [...]
A federal district judge sitting in Florida has ruled that a
US Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald Neumann has said that US troops cannot be prosecuted under Afghan law, striking a sharp contrast to statements made Thursday by Afghan Deputy Chief Justice Abdul Malik Kamawi that all foreigners who commit a crime in Afghanistan can be prosecuted under Afghan law. Neumann added that the US military never [...]
A federal judge in Michigan has ordered the National Security Agency to respond to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the legality of the NSA's domestic surveillance program . US District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor denied the NSA's motion to stay consideration of the ACLU's motion for partial summary judgment [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller plan to resume talks on Friday with major internet service providers on retaining customer data on internet activities that would allow them to better combat child pornography and terrorism. An initial meeting last Friday included American Online, Microsoft, Google, Verizon and Comcast; this week's meeting [...]
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has criticized the UN-funded International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as inefficient, and said that several ICTR employees should be testifying before the court for their involvement in the 1994 genocide the court was established to investigate. In a press conference Wednesday, Kagame noted that the ICTR has convicted fewer than [...]
AP is reporting that US Army Sgt. Santos A. Cardona has been sentenced to 90 days hard labor without confinement and a reduction in rank for abusing detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison . Cardona was convicted Thursday of dereliction of duty and aggravated assault in connection with the use of unmuzzled dogs when questioning [...]
