The US Supreme Court Wednesday heard oral arguments on whether a patent on a two-step technique used to measure Vitamin B deficiencies allows its owners to monopolize an unpatentable scientific principle or natural phenomenon. Bush administration lawyers urged the Court not to consider the broader questions raised by Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings v. Metabolite [...]

Mikhail Khodorkovsky , the former owner of Russian oil giant Yukos who was convicted of tax fraud last year and is now incarcerated in a Siberian prison , filed an appeal Tuesday in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) alleging that the Russian courts violated his due process rights. Khodorkovsky's lawyers announced their intention [...]

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin indicated Tuesday that he might back off from his previous insistence on a provision of the First Employment Contract (CPE) he guided through Parliament earlier this month that would allow employers to fire any worker under 26 years old without cause during the first two years on the job. [...]

The US has welcomed a weekend agreement by the eight main political parties of Bosnia and Herzegovina on changes to the country's constitution at the end of negotiations that began four months ago . The final outstanding issue involving procedures for presidential elections was resolved by Bosnian Muslims and Serbs accepting the request of Croats [...]

Chinese prosecutors are refusing to release a New York Times researcher despite receiving a court order last week dismissing the charges against him, the researcher's lawyer said Tuesday. Zhao Yan has been detained since 2004, accused of leaking confidential state information to foreigners , but the charges were unexpectedly dropped last week, reportedly in anticipation [...]

A Connecticut Superior Court on Tuesday began hearing a lawsuit brought by eight same-sex couples who claim that the state's marriage law is unconstitutional because it treats heterosexual couples differently than same-sex couples by defining marriage as existing only between a man and a woman. The lawsuit was filed in 2004 with the assistance of [...]

Approximately 100 opposition activists in Belarus have been detained for protesting the country's presidential elections over the weekend, which locked in a third term for Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko , a lawyer for the Belarus People's Front party said Tuesday. The party's lawyer said the activists are being held at a prison outside Minsk. No [...]

A new report issued Tuesday by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe says that a resurgence in Serb nationalism evident after the death in detention of ex-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic makes it unlikely that fugitive Bosnian Serb war crimes indictee Ratko Mladic will soon be handed over to the International Criminal Tribunal for [...]

A Sri Lankan man seeking asylum in the US is expected to be released shortly after being held in prison for four years. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered the release of Ahilan Nadarajah Friday, holding that the US government was violating federal law by detaining Nadarajah without charge or the [...]

A military jury has found US Army Sgt. Michael J. Smith guilty on six counts of abusing detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison for using his unmuzzled dog to intimidate inmates. Smith was found guilty of two counts of maltreatment of detainees, conspiring to make a contest of making detainees soil themselves, dereliction of duty, [...]