A judge Tuesday pre-approved a $120 million settlement agreement for class action plaintiffs claiming they were molested by priests of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Covington in Kentucky, marking the largest settlement agreement yet for US church abuse victims. The ruling allows $40 million of the diocese assets to be paid to victims right away [...]

Leading Tuesday's corporations and securities law news, a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) spokesman said today that the agency still plans to pursue a $785 million civil suit against former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard Scrushy despite his acquittal last week in the criminal case against him. The SEC filed a complaint in March 2003 accusing [...]

US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said Tuesday that President Bush has not changed his position on environmental policy but wants to broaden the debate at the G8 summit on matters beyond the Kyoto accord. Hadley said Bush was concerned with focussing on solving "inter-related problems" such as pollution, poverty alleviation and the development of [...]

Leading Tuesday's states brief, the Oklahoma Supreme Court Tuesday struck down the Oklahoma Municipal Employees Collective Bargaining Act as unconstitutional. The state law allowed municipal employees to unionize in cities with populations greater than 35,000. The court found the law unconstitutional because it discriminated against municipal workers in towns with smaller populations, and Justice Steven [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, Nepal Bar Association president Shambhu Thapa has called on King Gyanedra to relinquish his position as chairman of the Council of Ministers, which would effectively remove Gyanedra's direct control of the Nepalese government. Thapa criticized the five months of direct, monarchial rule since the February 1 declaration of a state of [...]

Interior ministers for Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Germany meeting prior to the G8 summit Tuesday announced a plan to put together joint flights to deport illegal immigrants from the European Union. The plan calls for planes to stop in each of the five nations to pick up illegal immigrants of the same nationality before [...]

The prospects for an EU software patent directive that would create a uniform software patenting system across Europe appeared limited Tuesday as European legislators expressed reservations about the measure. Many legislators and software companies fear that the law would limit innovation and restrict the work of small businesses. Currently, patent disputes are resolved in the [...]

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald on Tuesday demanded the grand jury testimony of TIME magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, even though TIME has turned over e-mails and other documents to the probe into who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame . Fitzgerald also opposed the requests of Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller [...]

African leaders Tuesday approved a resolution at the fifth African Union Summit seeking two permanent seats on the expanding UN Security Council . The AU is calling for the number of Council seats be increased from 15 to 26, with six of the new members granted permanent seats with veto rights; two of the other [...]

A German court said Tuesday that Sasser computer worm author Sven Jaschan has admitted to data manipulation, computer sabotage and interfering with public corporations in one of the largest worm attacks conducted on the Internet. The destructive computer worm began knocking out the nearly 1 million computer systems it affected last May by spreading via [...]