In Thursday's environmental law news, Australian state and territory leaders have agreed to establish their own carbon-trading system which would set a cap on the total volume of greenhouse gases an industry can emit. They would then divide the cap into permits, equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide, which companies could trade with each [...]

Leading Thursday's corporations and securities law news, Canada has retaliated against several US goods by levying a 15% surtax on cigarettes, oysters, and live swine. The action is a response to the Byrd Amendment which allows American companies to keep the proceeds that Washington collects in anti-dumping disputes. Canada and other countries say that the [...]

Rwanda's main group of Hutu rebels denounced the 1994 genocide of Tutsis for the first time Thursday and announced they were ending their war against the Rwanda government. Ignace Murwanashyaka, president of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the delegation representing the rebel organization, said the group will lay down its arms [...]

A family spokesman says that severely brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo has died. 10:02 AM ET – Terri Schiavo's death comes nearly 14 days after removal of her feeding tube. Her death has been confirmed by George Felos, attorney for Terri's husband Michael Schiavo. News reports are giving her time of death as just after [...]

A presidential commission on Thursday said US intelligence agencies know "disturbingly little" about threats posed by the nation's most dangerous adversaries, and the commission recommended more than 70 changes that President Bush can make to improve intelligence. The WMD Presidential Commission appointed by President Bush to determine why US spy agencies mistakenly concluded that Iraq [...]

An appeals court in Afghanistan has reduced the sentences of three US citizens who had been convicted of torturing Afghans and running a private jail in Kabul. The three men, Jonathan Idema , Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo, who were in Afghanistan on a freelance terrorist hunt, were arrested in July, 2004 after Afghan forces [...]

Israel's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the country can recognize non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism not performed in Israel, a decision which challenges the Orthodox monopoly over Israili religious affairs. Up to this time, converts who sought Israeli citizenship needed an Orthodox rabbi to perform the conversion in Israel. Now, however, people who are converted by [...]

Myanmar's military junta announced Thursday that it has adjourned talks to draw up a new democratic constitution for the country. Military officials blamed high temperatures and the upcoming monsoon season for the closing of the National Convention, suggesting the talks will not restart until November at the earliest. Western critics have labelled the move a [...]

A military court in Germany Thursday found US Army Captain Rogelio "Roger" Maynulet guilty of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter in connection with the shooting death of an Iraqi civilian last year, a lesser charge than that sought by military prosecutors who wanted him convicted of assault with intent to commit murder. The [...]

In what is expected to be the very last high court appeal by the parents of Terri Schiavo , the US Supreme Court late Wednesday rejected another petition to have Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted pending a legal review. The petition against a Wednesday Eleventh Circuit ruling refusing a full court rehearing of the case was [...]