US courts approved 1,773 requests for wiretaps last year in state and federal investigations, a four percent increase from the prior year, according to the 2005 Wiretap Report released Monday by the Administrative Office of the US Courts . In state courts, wiretap applications grew by 17 percent to 1,148 requests with New York (391), [...]
The US has urged Nigeria against amending its constitution to allow current President Olusegun Obasanjo to run for a third term in office. In an unusual statement, the US Embassy in Abujah said the US "respects the right of any country to amend its constitution through democratic, transparent and legal means" but suggested that term [...]
The trial for former Alabama Governor Donald Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy begins Tuesday as the pair face federal bribery and racketeering charges . Siegelman is accused of accepting bribes from contractors to award state work, and Scrushy allegedly paid $500,000 to pay off Siegelman's 1999 campaigning debts in exchange for Scrushy being [...]
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin expressed support Tuesday for a proposed immigration law , but indicated that its language could be amended after meeting over the weekend with leaders of the Catholic and Protestant churches in France, who oppose the bill. The National Assembly will first consider the measure Tuesday afternoon, but religious and [...]
Iran Monday denounced what it called US 'threats' of possible military action against it in connection with its development of nuclear technology as illegal and urged UN action. Iranian ambassador to the UN Javad Zarif said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that "US dailies are publishing stories about possibility of aggression on [...]
A Turkish appeals court has rejected a prosecutor's recommendation and has ruled that charges still stand against Hrant Dink, a high-profile Turkish-Armenian journalist and editor of the newspaper Agos who has written about the killings of an estimated million Ottoman Armenians in the early 20th century. Accused of publicly denigrating or insulting Turkishness under controversial [...]
Marshall v. Marshall, Supreme Court of the United States, May 1, 2006 . Excerpt from the Opinion per Justice Ginsburg: the probate exception reserves to state probate courts the probate or annulment of a will and the administration of a decedent's estate; it also precludes federal courts from endeavoring to dispose of property that is [...]
Hundreds of thousands of US immigrants boycotted work and participated in protests across the country Monday as part of the "Day Without Immigrants" , a nationwide, day-long effort to influence the ongoing immigration reform debate in Congress. Those boycotting work mostly consisted of Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal, and succeeded in shutting down numerous [...]
The retrial of two Enron broadband executives on conspiracy and fraud charges is set to begin Tuesday, nearly a year after a jury acquitted five former executives on some charges and failed to reach a verdict on several others. Lawyers for former accountant Michael Krautz and former CFO Kevin Howard argued that it would be [...]
South Africa is considering how to handle the recent declassification of a 1992 report made by a top general to former South Africa President FW de Klerk detailing involvement by the South African military in unofficial violence during the final years of apartheid . According to the Steyn report, named after General Pierre Steyn who [...]
