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. [...]

Experts with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed concern over the fairness of the trial of 15 men in Uzbekistan charged with terrorism and precipitating the violent uprising in the town of Andijan in May 2005, according to a press release issued Thursday. According to the statement: The Special Rapporteurs are concerned [...]

Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture , has voiced concern that countries are using diplomatic assurances to circumvent the absolute prohibition in the Convention against Torture against the forcible return to countries where there is a risk of torture or ill-treatment. Nowak said that some countries are deporting aliens to countries that systematically [...]

Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister Jon Stanhope on Thursday became the first state or territory leader in Australia to reject the federal government's proposed anti-terrorism legislation in its current form. Stanhope's opposition focused on provisions dealing with preventative detention and control orders. After receiving expert opinion, Stanhope concluded that he would not implement provisions that [...]

Investment banks and other defendants associated with the WorldCom accounting fraud fallout have agreed to settle with a group of over 65 institutional investors for $651 million. The investors had opted out of a broader class action lawsuit previously brought that netted $6.1 billion for WorldCom stock and bond holders. The settlement will compensate institutional [...]

After Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination to the US Supreme Court in a letter to President Bush Thursday, Republican and Democratic Senators who had generally been lukewarm about her nomination and skeptical of her experience and credentials seemed ready to move on to a new candidate. Senate Judiciary Committee member Charles Schumer (D-NY) for instance [...]