In Tuesday's environmental law news, an Indonesian court heard arguments Tuesday on whether it should proceed with a criminal trial of US-based Newmont Mining Corp. for alleged pollution in Buyat Bay. The hearing had been postponed in August when the country's Supreme Court ordered two of the judges back to Jakarta for training on environmental [...]

Leading Tuesday's states brief, a North Carolina court of appeals has ruled that promotional game pieces packaged with telephone long-distance cards are not part of an illegal lottery. State officials claimed that Treasured Arts, Inc.'s long-distance telephone cards were an illegal form of gambling because the cards offered scratch-off game pieces with prizes up to [...]

The Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court has overturned a lower court decision allowing rights groups to monitor polling stations during the country's first multi-candidate presidential elections on Wednesday. The holding, in which the court ruled that the Presidential Election Commission's decisions are not subject to judicial review, appears to avoid conflict after the commission said it [...]

UN diplomats continued feverish negotiations Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to prepare a coherent platform of agreed reforms in time for the World Summit 2005 , but an impasse persists with only days remaining. In the most recent setback, UN General Assembly President Jean Ping cancelled a news conference set for last Friday in which [...]

Morgan Stanley has agreed to a $700,000 settlement over claims of improper trading in a couple's brokerage account, the Delaware Department of Justice said Tuesday. According to a 2003 complaint filed by the Securities Division of the department, two Morgan Stanley brokers made hundreds of unauthorized transactions on the Delaware couple's account. The settlement amount [...]

US and international human rights groups Tuesday condemned the failure of authorities to protect victims of Hurricane Katrina who were left for days without relief in increasingly desperate conditions in New Orleans and the surrounding Gulf Coast area. The US Human Rights Network urged in a statement that the rights of the hundreds of thousands [...]

Several US Supreme Court justices and many other Americans lined the Great Hall of the nation's high court Tuesday to pay final respects to the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist . Rehnquist's flag-draped casket was carried into the Great Hall among marble busts of former chief justices and placed upon the historic Lincoln Catafalque, [...]

US Senator Arlen Specter , chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and co-author of a bill to create a $140 billion asbestos compensation fund, said Tuesday that he hoped the Senate would take up the legislation in early October. Specter had called for a vote before the August recess , but the Senate adjourned before [...]

Rwandan Army Major-General Laurent Munyakazi has been arrested on charges relating to the 1994 Rwandan genocide , a court official said Tuesday. Munyakazi's arrest was ordered by a local gacaca court , a community-based court comprised largely of untrained citizens, and is the first time an officer of such seniority has been detained by a [...]

The final report of the Independent Inquiry Committee investigating the now defunct UN Oil-for-Food program will show that corruption and inefficiencies lead to the program's failure, according to an advanced copy obtained by AP. The report is said to conclude that both the UN Secretariat and the UN Security Council failed to take clear command [...]