The Bush administration Friday officially proposed amendments to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would subject more people to electronic surveillance within the United States. The proposed legislation, submitted a week before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on government surveillance slated for April 17, would allow US intelligence agencies to monitor foreign nationals [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) took federal prosecutors' political activities and connections to the conservative Federalist Society into account in deciding whether to retain or dismiss them, according to documents released Friday by the DOJ to the US House Judiciary Committee. Among the 2394 newly released pages of e-mails, schedules and memos were a [...]

Poland's parliament Friday rejected constitutional amendments that would have strengthened the country's anti-abortion laws. Poland's current 1993 abortion law is already one of Europe's strictest, allowing abortions only when the woman's health is threatened by pregnancy, the baby is likely to be handicapped, or the pregnancy is the result of rape. The conservative ruling League [...]

The US Senate Committee on Finance has approved a bill which would provide the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries with drug manufacturers, insurers and pharmacies. The Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act , which passed in the committee by a [...]

A group of Argentine veterans of the 1982 Falkland Islands conflict have filed a lawsuit alleging that the Argentine military tortured and killed its own troops during the brief war with Britain over possession of the South Atlantic islands. The former soldiers say they witnessed 20 soldiers being shot, starved or staked to the ground [...]

An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commander was suspended Friday after video footage taken in the West Bank Wednesday showed IDF soldiers under his control ordering two Palestinian teens to stand in front of their vehicle to protect it from stones being thrown by local bystanders during a military raid. Palestinian Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti told [...]

Critics of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf continued protests Friday outside the venue of the latest court hearing on the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry , burning an effigy of Musharraf and demanding his resignation. Inside the courtroom, the Supreme Judicial Council adjourned until April 18th to consider objections that Chaudhry's lawyers raised to three [...]

A New Jersey federal judge dismissed a class action brought by investors of Merck & Co. Thursday, ruling that the suit was filed after the statute of limitations had run . The investors had said that Merck had deliberately concealed information from them about the safety record of its arthritis drug Vioxx . US District [...]

The Russian government Friday renewed its call for the United Kingdom to extradite Russian business billionaire Boris Berezovsky , who has been charged with plotting a coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin . The request for extradition followed Berezovsky's latest call for the forceful overthrow of Putin. Berezovsky's comments have strained an already tenuous relationship [...]

Former Computer Associates (CA) CEO Sanjay Kumar will pay almost $800 million in restitution over his lifetime for his role in the accounting fraud in which CA swapped revenues of $2.2 billion with another company in 1999 and 2000, according to a settlement approved Friday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of [...]