IBM did not discriminate against older workers by adopting a cash-balance pension plan, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled Monday. A unanimous three-judge panel reversed a 2003 district court decision , finding that the IBM plan did not violate subsections of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) that prohibit age [...]

The sole surviving hostage-taker in the 2004 Beslan school siege will be given a new name to prevent retaliation by other inmates at the island penal colony where he will be imprisoned, a law enforcement source told the Interfax news agency Monday. Nurpashi Kulayev , who was found guilty of terrorism in May, will serve [...]

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has issued regulations that forbid party and government officials from appointing relatives as subordinates, limits officials to two consecutive five-year terms and requires those who have served for 10 years to transfer to different regions. The three regulations, issued Sunday, apply to officials at the county [...]

One of the US soldiers charged with the rape and murders of Iraqi civilians in Mahmudiya told a criminal investigator that the attack's alleged ringleader repeatedly spoke of wanting to kill Iraqis, according to testimony given Monday at a hearing in Baghdad. The investigator, Benjamin Bierce, testified at an Article 32 hearing to determine whether [...]

The federal trial of David Passaro , a CIA contractor accused of abusing a detainee in Afghanistan , began Monday in Raleigh, North Carolina. Passaro was charged in 2004, and has maintained that the government is using him as a scapegoat in the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal . Passaro is the first [...]

US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the US is failing to adequately spread the positive aspects of the "Western idea of democracy," in an address to the American Bar Association at their annual meeting in Hawaii on Saturday. Kennedy suggested that other parts of the world do not believe in democracy because the [...]

Martha Stewart has reached a settlement agreement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on insider trading civil charges , the SEC announced Monday. Stewart will pay $195,000, which is roughly equivalent to the losses Stewart avoided by selling nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems stock one day before the Food and Drug Administration declined [...]

A court in Argentina has convicted a former police officer of human rights violations during the country's so-called "Dirty War" , handing down the first sentence since the Argentine Supreme Court threw out the country's amnesty laws last year. After a trial which began in late June, Julio Simon was sentenced to 25 years in [...]

The Israel Defense Forces detained Fadl Hamdan, a member of the Palestinian parliament , during an overnight raid early Monday morning in the West Bank. Israeli authorities did not explain their reason for the detention. Hamdan is one of about 30 Palestinian lawmakers detained in the last six weeks, along with nearly a third of [...]

A Jordan military court Sunday convicted two lawmakers from the Islamic Action Front (IAF) , the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood , for expressing sympathy after the death of al Qaeda Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi when they visited Zarqawi's relatives in his native Jordan. The court sentenced Mohammed Abu Fares to two years [...]