The Connecticut General Assembly passed a tough new campaign finance law Thursday that strictly limits campaign contributions for all state offices and creates a public campaign finance system. Once enacted, the bill will ban political contributions from lobbyists, their spouses, and state contractors, limit contributions of political action committees, and close a loophole that previously [...]

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Samsung , the world's largest maker of computer memory chips, has pleaded guilty to criminal antitrust charges and was ordered pay a $300 million fine, the second largest fine in a criminal antitrust case, for conspiring to fix the price of its personal computer chips. The South Korean-based company was charged with artificially inflating the [...]

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Australia's Labor Party leader Kim Beazley said Thursday that the controversial sedition provisions set to be included in Australia's new anti-terror laws lower the country "to the standard of North Korea, Syria and Cuba." On Wednesday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard bowed to pressure from back-benchers and agreed to several amendments to the proposed anti-terror [...]

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Iraq Interior Minister Bayan Jabr on Thursday fired Nouri al-Nouri, the country's senior inspector handling human rights issues, in connection with a torture scandal involving dozens of prisoners at a Baghdad prison, according to an Iraqi official. Al-Nouri, the ministry's lead inspector for corruption and human rights violations since Iraq regained sovereignty in June 2004, [...]

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Nigeria's Kaduna Code of Conduct Tribunal on Thursday began legal proceedings against Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, governor of the oil-rich state Bayelsa , on charges of corruption. The tribunal, an anti-corruption body that has the power to strip elected officials of immunity, has begun investigating alleged failures by Alamieyeseigha to declare properties and bank accounts. He fled [...]

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Walgreens said Thursday it has suspended four Illinois pharmacists without pay for refusing to fill prescriptions for the morning-after pill in violation of a state rule. The pharmacists said their objections stemmed from religious or moral beliefs. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich issued a rule April 1, 2005 demanding that pharmacists make the pill available "without [...]

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