The Environmental Protection Agency and the US Justice Department announced on Tuesday that ExxonMobil will spend an estimated $571 million to settle a lawsuit with the federal government and three states over alleged violations of the Clean Air Act . The settlement is intended to cut the annual production of pollutants from ExxonMobil's refineries that [...]

Nepal's King Guyanendra has approved a new ordinance tightening oversight of the country's media. Among other provisions, the newly-enacted bill authorizes imprisonment and increased fines of individuals who publish "banned items," prohibits publication of stories that inspire disrespect or hatred of the king, and outlaws FM radio stations that broadcast news programs. Parliament first introduced [...]

The UK House of Lords debated the proposed Racial and Religious Hatred Bill Tuesday as a coalition of demonstrators protested outside parliament. The bill, proposed last year, is would ban incitement to religious hatred. The demonstrators, which included both religious believers and critics of religion, argued the bill would restrict religious believers' right to evangelize [...]

Leading Tuesday's environmental law news, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill that would have created the first statewide program to track trace amounts of chemical pollutants in human subjects to study the relationship between chemical exposure and health. Schwarzenegger said that the bill would "only provide a partial snapshot of chemicals present in tested [...]

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) opened their case Tuesday in the trial against three former officers of the Yugoslavian army who allegedly permitted the massacre of more than 200 hospital patients in the Croatian town of Vukovar. The prosecution accused the three former officers, known as the Vukovar Three [...]

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments on whether convicted murderer Ronald Sanders was wrongly sentenced to death by a California jury that improperly relied on invalid aggravating factors in deciding the sentence. Sanders was sentenced to death in 1982 for beating a woman to death in a drug-related robbery. In arguments Tuesday [...]

Twenty-four Danish citizens have brought suit against Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen , claiming his decision to go to war in Iraq violated Denmark's constitution. The plaintiffs allege that Rassmussen's decision to join the US-led coalition which invaded Iraq in 2003, was constitutionally improper on two grounds. First, the plaintiffs allege that under Article [...]

Prosecutors in the corruption trial of former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma asked a magistrate Tuesday to postpone the trial until Nov. 1 to allow for further investigation for possible additional charges. The prosecution also requested the case be moved to the High Court, but Zuma's lawyers argued that the case could not be [...]

MSNBC is reporting that Microsoft and RealNetworks have settled Real's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for $761 million. AP has background on the settlement. 4:04 PM ET – According to the settlement , Microsoft will make a $460 million upfront cash payment and an additional $301 million in cash and services in order to settle the [...]

Former media mogul Conrad Black is expected Tuesday to appeal an Ontario court's ruling that would allow his Canadian-based holding company Ravelston Corporation to face criminal fraud charges in the United States. Black's lawyers maintain that US courts do not have jurisdiction over Ravelston. They also argue that Black is the victim of a smear [...]