In a banner day in telecommunications regulation, the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday voted to lessen the strictness of regulations requiring major telephone carriers to lease lines to competitors at federally-mandated rates, and to facilitate wireless Internet access for airplane travellers, but declined to apply indecency standard to satellite radio broadcasters. Under the new phone line [...]

Case Concerning Legality of the Use of Force (Serbia and Montenegro v. United Kingdom), International Court of Justice, December 15, 2004 . Read the judgment of the court here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Google's use of trademarked names as keywords to trigger advertising by rival companies is legal, according to a ruling Wednesday by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema. Insurance giant Geico brought suit in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, claiming that Google's use of the word "Geico" in keyword advertising violates its trademark [...]

British Home Secretary David Blunkett (official Home Office biography here), one of the most powerful ministers in the cabinet of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the minister responsible for pushing sweeping anti-terror legislation through the UK Parliament in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, has resigned in the wake of [...]

Peter Henning, Wayne State University Law School: "An article in the New York Times (Dec. 15) states that Time Warner is preparing to announce a settlement in a long-running SEC and Department of Justice investigation into accounting issues at its American Online unit (AOL), including a $400 million transaction between AOL and Bertelsmann in 2000.  [...]

The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled Wednesday that it could not hear a case brought by Serbia and Montenegro against eight NATO countries – Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands and Portugal – in respect of NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, then led by President Slobodan Milsoevic, now on [...]

Critics of a new draft Russian anti-terror law said Wednesday that the legislation recently introduced in the Russian parliament by pro-Kremlin legislators in the wake of the Beslan school massacre this fall is far too broad, and is unduly restrictive of public and press freedoms. The 50-page draft authorizes the declaration of a "state of [...]

Report of the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, International Advisory and Monitoring Board, December 14, 2004 . Read the full text of the report here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A federal judge in Ohio has ruled that the punch-card voting system used in Ohio in 2004 and, notoriously, in Florida in 2000, does not discriminate against voters using it. The ACLU of Ohio had brought a suit arguing that the punch-card system was more error-prone and discriminated against persons using it, many of whom [...]

AP is reporting that Time Warner Inc. has agreed to pay a $210 million fine to settle a Justice Department investigation of securities fraud involving its America Online unit. 11:20 AM ET – A full story is now available from AP here.