Three days after gang related riots in seven Guatemalan prisons killed 35 inmates, three more inmate gang members were injured in riots Thursday. A later search of the prison uncovered 3 grenades, 6 guns and many homemade weapons. Blanca de Stalling, the director of an association of public defense lawyers, the Institute of Criminal Public [...]
Four tobacco companies have filed suit against the state of Kentucky for violating the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) made between 46 states and more than 40 tobacco companies, regulating payments to states and restrictions on tobacco promotion. The four companies, Vector Group , Commonwealth Brands , King Maker Marketing , and Sherman's 1400 Broadway [...]
Grundfos , a Danish company that produces industrial pumps, admitted Friday that two employees paid kickbacks to authorities in Saddam Hussein's government under the UN oil-for-food program . An internal Grundfos investigation uncovered the bribes, which were made between 2001 and 2002 to secure two contracts, but the company declined to reveal the amount of [...]
The lawyer for former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz announced Thursday that he expects his client to be released from US custody shortly without being put on trial. Badia Aref told Reuters that due to legal developments that could not be disclosed, he expected his client to be freed soon. Aref also denied rumors [...]
A US military jury reduced the rank of Pfc. Willie Brand to private, the lowest pay grade in the army, at his sentencing hearing Thursday. In doing so, the jury disregarded the prosecutor's recommendation that Brand be sentenced to 10 years in a military prison for his conviction on assault, maltreatment, false official swearing and [...]
Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff , indicted by a federal grand jury on bank fraud charges last week, will plead not guilty, according to a statement made by his lawyer Neal Sonnett Thursday. The charges allege he defrauded two lenders of $60 million to buy San Cruz Casino from Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was murdered in [...]
The Federal Election Commission voted 6-0 in favor of Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA) and John Doolittle (R-CA) Thursday to allow members of Congress to raise unlimited funds from unions, corporations and other donors to fight Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Proposition 77 . The redistricting initiative would place the power to draw congressional and state legislative in [...]
Sunni Arab negotiators working on Iraq's draft constitution continue to refuse to compromise their demands for a strong central government in Iraq , fearing that federalism will divide the country. While the Supreme Council for the Islam Revolution in Iraq , the largest Shiite political party, supports the creation of a federal region in Shiite-dominated [...]
The Walt Disney Company asked the nonprofit firm Verite to investigate allegations of labor abuse in factories run by its Chinese contractors, according to a statement Friday. Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) , a non-governmental, Hong Kong-based organization created by students to protect workers' rights, made the initial allegations in a report titled [...]
The Hamburg Supreme Court convicted Mounir el Motassadeq Friday of belonging to a terrorist organization and sentenced him to seven years in prison, but acquitted him of being an accessory to the murder of the over 3,000 people killed in the World Trade Center attacks. The German Supreme Court threw out his conviction on both [...]
