In Thursday's environmental law news, sixteen firms, including Huffy, Lockheed Martin, Mobil Oil, and Philip Morris, have agreed to pay $14.9 million for polluting groundwater in California. In 1979, a contamination plume, measuring 1 mile wide by 8 miles long, was discovered under Baldwin park in Whittier, CA. Known as the San Gabriel Valley Area [...]

Padilla v. Hanft, Brief of Petitioner for Writ of Certiorari, Supreme Court of the United States, October 27, 2005 . Read the full text of the brief here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The Manipulation of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme, Independent Inquiry Committee, October 27, 2005 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Reacting Thursday to the publication of the Volcker committee's final report on the UN oil-for-food scandal , UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the US State Department both emphasized the need to reform program oversight mechanisms at the United Nations which they said allowed Iraqi ex-president Saddam Hussein to corrupt the UN's humanitarian Oil-for-Food Program . [...]

The Constitutional Court of Korea Thursday struck down a statute limiting the scope of medical advertising to statements on types of services offered, types of facilities, and number of employees. The content of hospital and clinic advertising may now include representations as to the capabilities and methods of the provider. The 6-3 majority decision reasoned [...]

The US Department of Justice Thursday endorsed the mergers of Verizon Communications with MCI and SBC Communications with AT&T , requiring both Verizon and SBC to lease to competitors unused or "dark" communications lines that run to office buildings in several metropolitan areas. The DOJ Antitrust Division filed complaints in the US DC District Court [...]

Kenya's debate over its draft constitution has erupted into violence, with supporters and opponents clashing in the streets in what has become an increasingly intense disagreement over a controversial document. Dozens were injured during rioting by machete-wielding demonstrators Wednesday evening in the town of Kakamega in Kenya's Western Province. The incident is the latest in [...]

In a brief order issued Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied a request from Georgia to throw out a lower court injunction barring enforcement of the state's new voter identification law . In issuing last week's order , a US District Court judge reasoned that because the new law required [...]

A federal judge sitting in Baltimore Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by a group of lawyers seeking $24 million in legal fees for their work in the Microsoft antitrust cases , saying he did not have jurisdiction. The lawsuit was brought by a group of 27 law firms that represented plaintiffs in federal court who [...]

Lawyers for Sami Al-Arian , the former Florida college professor charged by the US government with aiding and abetting Palestinian terrorists, rested their case Thursday without calling a single witness to refute the five months of prosecution testimony. Al-Arian's lawyer called the prosecution an "all-out assault on the First Amendment" and then rested his case. [...]