The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that construction on a section of the West Bank separation barrier is legal and may continue. Rejecting a petition by Palestinian settlers who will be unable to access Jerusalem once construction is complete, the court said the Israeli government properly balanced the effect of the barrier on Palestinians [...]
US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin has written a letter to US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) saying that the watchdog agency will not investigate the collection of millions of phone records by the National Security Agency (NSA) . In the letter, dated Monday, Martin contends that the FCC cannot perform an effective investigation [...]
The US Senate Intelligence Committee voted 12-3 Tuesday to approve the nomination of US Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) . Despite the recent controversy over Hayden’s role in the collection and turnover of US citizens’ phone records to the National Security Agency (NSA) , Hayden easily [...]
New Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has announced he will focus on fighting corruption, which Iraqi and US officials say is rampant in the government. The problem is a long-standing one, but documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that it has become pervasive, manifested in everything from government contracts to the purchase of [...]
A Los Angeles lawyer on Tuesday became the third person to plead guilty in connection with alleged kickbacks at Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman , the leading class action law firm that was indicted last week. The US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said Richard R. Purtich funneled $879,868 to a former [...]
The US detention center in Guantanamo Bay is a legal black hole, an Australian High Court judge has said. Justice Michael Kirby made the statement Monday in a speech to the Sydney Peace Foundation . David Hicks , an Australian who is awaiting trial before a US military commission on charges of aiding al Qaeda [...]
German police may not trawl databases to identify possible terrorists without a specific threat to national security, human life or freedom, the German Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday. "A general threat situation, of the kind that has existed continuously in regard to terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, or external political tensions, is not sufficient," the [...]
Ethiopia's Federal High Court has postponed a verdict in the genocide trial of former dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam until next January. The announcement of the verdict had been scheduled for Tuesday. Even though the trial has lasted 12 years, the delay was necessary for the court to review new defense evidence, according to the head [...]
Author Studs Terkel and other Illinois residents are suing AT&T to bar the phone company from handing over customer records to the National Security Agency (NSA) without court oversight. The putative class action lawsuit , filed Monday in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois , seeks declaratory and injunctive relief but not [...]
Lee Boyd Malvo testified Tuesday in a Maryland court against John Allen Muhammad in Muhammad's second trial involving the murder of six people in Maryland during a three-week shooting spree in the Washington, DC area in 2002. Malvo testified that Muhammad planned to "terrorize" the nation prior to the sniper attacks and had outlined a [...]
