In Monday's environmental law news, the Government Accountability Office has issued a report saying that the US Forest Service did not violate federal laws that prohibit spending for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by Congress. At issue was a $90,000 contract given to a San Francisco-based PR firm to promote the USFS's plan to triple logging in Sierra Nevada forests. The campaign justified the controversial increase in logging as necessary to avoid catastrophic wildfires. The GAO report is not yet available online. AP has more.

In other environmental law news...

• The Israeli Cabinet heard from a panel of international experts calling for an immediate stop to fish farming on the Red Sea, specifically near the resort town of Eilat. The scientists argue that waste from the farm is wrecking the natural balance of the clear warm waters that allow a unique coral reef to survive. The coral reef is the northern-most in the world and is now 70 percent dead. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised a Cabinet decision within weeks. AP has the full story.

In a ruling Monday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Ruth Mesbur struck down as contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms a section of the Canadian federal Divorce Act that had defined spouse as "either a man or woman who are married to each other", allowing a same-sex lesbian couple married under provincial law to divorce.

Although the Ontario Court of Appeal had legalized same-sex marriages in the province in June 2003, the law controlling divorces had not been tested until now. A lawyer for one of the women believes this may be the first recognized gay or lesbian divorce in the world. The text of the ruling is not yet available online. Canadian Press has more.

Following up on a report carried earlier today in JURIST's Paper Chase, the Florida Department of State has now filed an appeal against a temporary injunction that was preventing presidential candidate Ralph Nader from appearing on Florida ballots. The appeal application automatically lifts the injunction, allowing Florida counties to put Nader's name on overseas absentee ballots which must be mailed by Saturday.

According to Florida Division of Elections director Dawn Roberts, the decision to appeal immediately instead of waiting for the hearing on a permanent injunction was driven by the possibility that Hurricane Ivan would delay the court proceedings - a delay that would prevent Nader from appearing on the overseas ballots even if the court found in his favor. As reported earlier in JURIST's Paper Chase, Nader is also awaiting a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court on whether his name will appear on the regular Florida ballots. Reuters has more.

As reported earlier today in JURIST's Paper Chase, a consortium led by the Sony Corporation is seeking to acquire the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film and television studio. MGM has now released a statement agreeing in principle to be acquired for $12 a share plus assumed debt, an expected value of over $3 billion. Read the MGM statement from their website here.

Sony had been engaged in a bidding war with Time Warner Inc. until that company dropped out on Monday. The deal is expected to be formally approved by MGM's board of directors by September 27. AP has more.

In Monday's corporations and securities law news, Public Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has announced that Enron has agreed to pay $321 million from the proceeds of its sale of its pipeline operations in CrossCountry Energy LLC to fund pension plans for thousands of former Enron employees. Following the settlement, a bankruptcy judge approved the sale of CrossCountry. As I reported last week, Enron had attempted to block a lawsuit brought by PBGC to control the company's pension plans. Reuters has more.

In other news...

• Sony has agreed in principle to buy Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the last independent Hollywood studio, for $4.8 billion. TimeWarner, the world's largest media group, withdrew its bid of $4.6 billion earlier today saying the price was too high. Read the TimeWarner statement regarding the bidding here. The Financial Times has more.
  
  
• Former Walt Disney directors Roy Disney and Stanley Gold are calling for a new chief executive for the company as soon as possible. Disney and Gold claim that Eisner's plan to retire in two years is a deliberate attempt to manage the appointment of his successor. Read the Disney and Gold open letter to the Board of Directors of Walt Disney here. Read Eisner's letter to the Board announcing his retirement here. The Financial Times has more.
  
  
• The SEC has settled charges of defrauding investors in Pimco Funds with three companies: PA Fund Management LLC, PEA Capital LLC and PA Distributors. The companies which will pay $50 million, consisting of a $40 million penalty and a $10 million distribution to shareholders, did not have to admit or deny the SEC charges. Read the SEC press release here. Read the Pimco Funds press release announcing the deal here[PDF]. AP has more.
  
  
• The SEC is considering bringing civil charges against Qwest Communications International Inc.'s former chief executive, Joseph P. Nacchiocould, related to the accounting scandal at the company. This follows the tentative agreement where Qwest has agreed to pay $250 million to settle fraud allegations brought by securities regulators. AP has more.
  
  
• US Airways has asked a judge for permission to skip a $110 million pension payment due Wednesday in a bid to keep the company afloat. As reported earlier on JURIST's Paper Chase, a federal bankruptcy judge gave the airline permission to continue its normal operations using money from a loan it secured last year with the help of the government. Reuters has more.
  
  
• The SEC is investigating former Wachovia Corp. Chief Financial Officer Robert McCoy regarding the bank's purchase of First Union Corp. stock prior to their merger. The Charlotte Business Journal has more.

Hundreds of people who worked on the World Trade Center cleanup have filed a class-action lawsuit against Silverstein Properties, the leaseholder of the towers, and four construction companies who supervised the removal of debris. The lawsuit, made public today, alleges that the workers did not have access to protective gear. The suit includes about 800 plaintiffs and was filed the last day before the federal three-year statute of limitations expired for lawsuits related to the terrorist attack. Some of the plaintiffs who do not currently suffer any symptoms from working on the site joined the lawsuit fearing risks that could develop later. Just last week, the CDC released a study which indicated many workers at the site suffered from respiratory problems long after the cleanup concluded. Read the CDC report here. AP has more.

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Monday upheld a District Court ruling allowing accused would-be 9/11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui access to persons designated "enemy combatants" for the purpose of deposing them in writing. In the same ruling the District Court had rejected the Government's proposed substitutions for the depositions and had imposed sanctions upon the Government for failing to produce the witnesses. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's finding on the depositions because they could provide Moussaoui with favorable and material testimony. It the Government's substitution list inadequate but it reversed the District Court's order that an adequate substitution list was improbable. Finally, the appeals court vacated the sanctions imposed upon the Government. Click to read the indictment against Moussaoui here. Complete docket information from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia is available here. Click to read the Fourth Circuit opinion here [PDF].

Former Israeli Prime Minister and now Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the main rival of current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Israel's ruling Likud party, Monday proposed a national referendum on the proposed withdrawal of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu believes that a referendum will "heal rifts in an increasingly divided nation." Sharon opposes the idea even though a majority of Israelis support the withdrawal because it could take months to prepare legislation for a referendum. Critics charge Netanyahu with attempting to postpone withdrawal with an eye toward new elections and a new government. Read more about Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan here. Review the terms of the current Road Map to Middle East peace that calls upon Israel to freeze all existing settlements and dismantle outposts created since March 2001. The Jerusalem Post has more.

Monday's expiration of the 1994 federal ban on assault-style firearms has stirred both sides of the gun control debate. The ban, signed into effect by President Clinton in 1994, lapsed because of a clause requiring specific reauthorization from Congress for it to continue. AP has more. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has accused President Bush of ducking his responsibility to protect Americans and fight terrorism by failing to ensure that the ban was renewed. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has two press releases available on the lapse of the ban, while the NRA has issued a statement on its website lauding the end of what it calls a "sad era".

The Florida Supreme Court will hear Ralph Nader's appeal from last week's ruling by a circuit judge to use ballots that do not include Nader. Nader's legal team had been scheduled to present arguments to the Florida Court of Appeal today, but the appeals court decided Monday to send the case directly to the Flordia Supreme Court. Read the full story from WFTV-TV in Florida. Accounts of Nader's legal battles to get on the ballot in many states are chronicled on his campaign website here.

A federal bankruptcy judge in Alexandria, VA gave US Airways permission Monday to continue its normal operations a day after the airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (as previously reported on JURIST's Paper Chase). WAVY-TV in Norfolk has more. Additional information about US Airways' restructuring can be found on the company's website. In related news, Delta Airlines met with bankruptcy lawyers on Monday, in preparation for the possibility that it too will file for bankrupcy protection. Reuters has the story here. Delta's latest statement about its plans can be found on its official website.

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said Monday that the US is willing to make changes to its draft UN Security Council resolution on Sudan, but said that Washington will insist on as strong a resolution as possible. As previously reported on JURIST's Paper Chase, the US formally introduced a draft resolution to the Security Council which calls for sanctions against Sudan's oil industry if the Sudanese government does not disarm rebels in Darfur. Russia and China have both objected to the draft. A vote on the resolution is expected this week. Aljazeera has more. JURIST's Paper Chase has additional background on the draft resolution.

Attorneys for Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Monday challenged a subpoena compelling Thatcher to answer questions from Equatorial Guinea prosecutors. Thatcher was arrested last month on charges of contravening South Africa's Foreign Military Assistance Act for his alleged role in an Equatorial Guinea coup plot. Thatcher's court appearance to answer EG questions will have no bearing on his November 25 trial on the South Africa charges. JURIST's Paper Chase has background on the subpoena and the South African Press Association has more.

The Board of Governors of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency is considering a draft resolution imposing a deadline on Iran to show that it does not have a nuclear weapons program. Germany, France and the UK are pushing for the inclusion of a November deadline, but IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei has said there isn't a time limit for the investigations into Iran's nuclear program. BBC News has more. Read ElBaradei's introductory statement at the IAEA Board of Governors' meeting. The IAEA has background on its negotiations with Iran.

Monday's New York Times highlights President Vladimir Putin's move to strengthen the Kremlin's power throuugh central naming of regional governors and an overhaul of the electoral system, excluding popular vote in some cases. The changes are proposed in reaction to the recent terrorist attacks in Russia. The NYT also includes articles on worries surrounding the push for absentee voting and how it may effect the presidential election, a Justice Department report that the rate of property crime and violent crime other than homicides remained at a 30-year low in 2003, and US Airways' plans for reorganization following the airline's second declaration of bankruptcy.

The Washington Post includes a piece on Pope John Paul II weighing in on gay marriage, telling bishops Monday that efforts to equate marriage between man and woman to other forms of cohabitation violated "God's plan for humanity," in answer to questions surrounding New Zealand's proposed Gay Marriage Bill.

USA Today notes an Amnesty International report declaring racial profiling a prevalent problem in the US, with more than 32 million claiming to have been victimized by it, possible civil charges pending against Qwest Communications International's former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio for his alleged role in an accounting scandal, and today's expiry of the the assault weapons ban.

Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) released a report Monday which concludes that profiling based on racial or religious background has become a growing problem in the US as the government expands its war on terror. Saying that one in three people are at high risk of being victimized, AIUSA makes the following recommendations:

1. The federal government should enact the End Racial Profiling Act of 2004 [PDF], or similarly comprehensive and effective anti-racial profiling legislation. Such a law would help our nation uphold its obligations under international treaties including the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and make it more difficult for law enforcement officers to violate Americans’ rights under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee to protection from
unreasonable searches.

2. State and local governments should enact laws that effectively ban racial profiling. Each existing state law should be amended so that it includes the basic components necessary for such a law to be an effective tool for combating this problem. These components include...:

banning the targeting of individuals and groups by law enforcement, even partially, on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion, except where there is trustworthy information, relevant to the locality and timeframe, that links persons belonging to one of the aforementioned groups to an identified
criminal incident or scheme

proscribing mandatory data collection for all stops and for all searches of pedestrians and motorists

criminalizing violations of the ban on racial profiling and specifying penalties for officers who repeatedly engage in racial profiling

3. All law enforcement agencies should fully enforce existing local, state, and national anti-racial profiling legislation and policies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced plans to expand the Russian central government's powers in response to recent terror attacks on Beslan and two Russian airliners (see JURIST's report on arrests in Beslan case here). Speaking Monday at a meeting of government leaders, Putin said the new authority will allow him to appoint regional governors that are currently elected, as well as move more of the Duma (official site in Russian), the Russian Parliament, to a party-list election process. Currently only half of the Duma's 450 representatives are elected on a party-list basis. Putin has also established a commission to examine the government's response to the attacks (see JURIST's report here), as well as possible methods for cutting down on terror, including the establishment of a new state counter-terrorism agency, the introduction of a color-coded alert system, and the reinstitution of the death penalty. BBC has more. Russian liberals have already condemned the proposals, according to a report on MosNews.com.... Legislative elections in Hong Kong have ended, with pro-democratic parties picking up only three more seats despite the anticipation of a better result. The elections drew a record turnout of voters (view the official results here). Xinhua News has more.... The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child opened its 37th annual session today in Geneva. The Committee began by expressing its sympathy and support for the victims of the Beslan school terrorist attacks. The Committee reviews complaints against states that have signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child and also works to encourage and enhance the treatment of children throughout the world. View the UN press release here.... Tensions appear to be rising over the planned handover of the Bakassi region of Nigeria. The oil-rich peninsula was ruled to be part of Cameroon under a 2002 ICJ ruling on boundary dispute (view the opinion here). The peninsula is home to tens of thousands of Nigerians, and the Nigerian representative was critical of the ICJ's ruling, claiming that it was illegal for the Nigerian government to cede land that was listed as Nigerian in the nation's constitution. BBC has more.

The Justice Department has released its annual National Crime Victimization Survey [PDF], reporting that the rates of property crime and violent crime, other than homicides, remained at a 30-year low in 2003. According to Lawrence Greenfeld, director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the decline in crime rates "probably has to do with demographics, and it probably has to do with having a lot of very high-rate offenders behind bars." Greenfeld also pointed to technological advances as contributing to the decline in crime rates, saying that police agencies can better communicate with one another. The DOJ has this press release and Monday's New York Times has more.

The Bush administration has denied charges that top military and national security officials ignored warnings about the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. In Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, a new book by journalist Seymour Hersh set for release Monday, Hersh writes that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld chose to do nothing about evidence of prisoner abuse and that President Bush signed off on a secret unit given advance approval to kill or capture and interrogate "high-value" suspects, which some consider to be in violation of international law. Reacting to the allegations over the weekend, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said that despite some concerns about overcrowding at Guantanamo Bay, there was "nothing that suggested, to my recollection, that there were abuses ... going on at Guantanamo, and certainly nothing that would suggest the kind of thing that went on in Abu Ghraib." Read a transcript of Rice's interview on CNN's Late Edition. The Defense Department also released a statement on Hersh's book, saying that it "apparently contains many of the numerous unsubstantiated allegations and inaccuracies which he has made in the past based upon unnamed sources." Monday's Guardian has details of the charges made in the Hersh volume. Publisher HarperCollins has posted a portion of Hersh's Chapter 1, entitled "Torture at Abu Ghraib: A Guantanamo Problem", on its website here. Also available is a transcript of Hersh's Sunday appearance on NBC News' Meet the Press. AP has more.

In Monday's US law and business press, the Legal Times reports on the possibility that the first detainee to be released from Guantanamo Bay after a military review tribunal ruled he had been wrongfully designated an "enemy combatant" may receive compensation for unlawful incarceration from the federal government.... The Legal Times also features a story on University of MD law professor Michael Greenberger and his expertise in counterterrorism, which may lead to his defining the parameters of that body of law.... The Sacramento Business Journal reports that a security supervisor at McClellan Air Force Base has been indicted on federal charges for using his pass keys to steal more than $400,000 of equipment and sell it on the Internet.... The National Law Journal examines the ability of law firms to make money with a 1,600-hour minimum billable requirement.... The Texas Lawyer reports on a recent TX Supreme Court ruling that political satire is a protected form of free speech even if it is not clearly labeled or if it attributes false quotes to real public officials.... FindLaw's Writ carries human rights attorney Joanne Mariner's column on whether the international community has a legal obligation to end the violence in Darfur, Sudan.