New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber on Monday filed a court petition on behalf of 16 states seeking to reactivate a lawsuit filed last year against the Environmental Protection Agency . The lawsuit challenged the EPA's "cap-and-trade" policy, scheduled to take effect in 2010, which permits power plants to buy mercury emissions reduction credits from [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin nominated Justice Minister Yury Chaika on Monday to be the country's new prosecutor-general . Leaders of the Federation Council , the upper house of parliament, said they expected Chaika to be confirmed . A vote is scheduled for June 23. The speaker of the lower house, the Duma, also expressed approval [...]

The Kurdistan Islamic Group and Kurdistan Islamic Union , both major Sunni political parties in Iraq, announced plans to campaign against a draft regional constitution for Kurdistan that does not draw its "principal source of legislation" from Islam. The two groups want the regional constitution to be in line with the second article of the [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday announced it would hear a second case challenging the constitutionality of the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 . The court granted certiorari in Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood , a Bush administration appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, which [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union confirmed Monday that a lawyer working for the New York attorney general's office informally warned the ACLU executive committee not to adopt proposed standards limiting ACLU board members from publicly speaking about their internal policies. The ACLU board met over the weekend to discuss the proposal, but took no action. [...]

Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistani-born Australian immigrant, was convicted Monday of plotting a terrorist attack in Australia, marking one of the first convictions under new Australian anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of 9/11. A New South Wales Supreme Court jury found Lodhi not guilty of downloading aerial maps for the purpose of terrorism after [...]

Italian prosecutors investigating the death of intelligence agent Nicola Calipari have requested the indictment of US Army Specialist Mario Lozano . Investigators concluded their probe last week , after news agencies reported in January that prosecutors intended to charge Lozano with murder. Calipari was shot to death in 2005 while driving to the Baghdad airport [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down three decisions in argued cases Monday, including a ruling in the consolidated cases of Rapanos v. US and Carabell v. Army Corps of Engineers , where a plurality of the Court decided that the Clean Water Act applies only to bodies of water that are "permanent, standing or continuously [...]

The trial of three Egyptian journalists and one lawyer accused of slandering a local election commission chief by alleging fraud in Egypt's November parliamentary election and publishing the names of two judges accused of rigging results in a runoff poll began Sunday. If convicted, they face up to two years in prison. The four defendants [...]

The UN Human Rights Council held its inaugural session Monday, convening for its first session as the replacement body for the beleaguered Human Rights Commission . The Human Rights Council will begin by passing two "vital documents" that will guarantee the rights of indigenous peoples and another that will oppose enforced disappearances. The first Council [...]