Select provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 are scheduled to expire in 2007, and activists disagree on whether or not they should be made permanent. The most debated provision is one that requires certain states, mostly southern, to seek approval from Washington to make specific election changes. A group led by the [...]

Republican members of the Senate Judiciary committee and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) have urged committee chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) to begin confirmation hearings on US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts during Congress' August recess, rather than after September 5 when the body reconvenes. The group has voiced concerns about whether Roberts would be [...]

Gregory Casey, a former executive for Qwest Communications , has reached an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to pay $2.1 million to settle civil charges . Casey was one of seven former Qwest executives, including ex-CEO Joseph Nacchio, charged in a civil lawsuit alleging accounting schemes that later forced the company to erase [...]

The US is set to announce a new global warming pact with China, India, Australia, and South Korea on Thursday, diplomats in Vientiane said Wednesday. US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick , who is currently attending the ASEAN regional forum in Laos, will hold a press conference announcing new strategies for developing energy technologies [...]

Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters on Tuesday that he thinks it's "perfectly reasonable" for the British police to be able to hold suspects without charges for more than the current 14 days. But he didn't specifically endorse the three-month time period recently requested by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) that has some [...]

Police arrested four suspects before dawn Wednesday morning in Birmingham, England, while searching for men wanted in last week's failed London bomb attacks . Reports from local media indicate that one of the men, subdued with a stun gun by police, was a suspected bomber, although police would not confirm a BBC report that the [...]

After sending a draft back to lawmakers for reconsideration earlier this month, King Mswati III of Swaziland has signed a new constitution for the sub-Saharan African nation amid concerns that it is undemocratic and designed to maintain the monarch's political power over the country. Copies of the finalized charter constitution were not released to journalists, [...]

As briefly noted yesterday in JURIST's Corporations and securities brief, WorldCom ex-CFO Scott Sullivan and two other executives have reached civil settlements over their roles in WorldCom's disastrous accounting fraud that bankrupted the company. Sullivan – who famously testified against recently-convicted WorldCom founder Bernard Ebbers – and the executives David Myers and Buford Yates plead [...]

In an interview with the Associated Press reported Tuesday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he would reconsider his predecessor John Ashcroft's policies on public access to government information. In October 2001 Ashcroft tightened existing policies on information requests, requiring federal agencies to carefully consider national security, law enforcement concerns, and personal privacy before releasing information [...]

US lawmakers trying to block a Chinese takeover bid for US oil firm Unocal prior to an crucial shareholders' vote next month have added an amendment to an energy bill that would push back by more than four months the start of a US government review of the bid by China National Offshore Oil Corp. [...]