A panel of federal judges in Texas has given parties to a lawsuit over Texas' congressional district two weeks to propose a solution to the 2003 Texas redistricting plan for the 23rd Congressional District, which the US Supreme Court scrapped on Wednesday. US District Judge T. John Ward of the Eastern District of Texas set [...]

Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has said that a group of two dozen Hamas MPs and ministers who were detained Thursday will not be held in administrative detention under the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law . Mazuz said he will instead use standard criminal warrants under the Prevention of Terror Ordinance . Mazuz said they [...]

Tenet Healthcare has agreed to pay $900 million to resolve federal allegations of illegal Medicare billing practices. Tenet was charged in 2003 with violating the False Claims Act by billing the government for services not provided to patients, billing it for "outlier" costs "substantially in excess" of the actual cost of care, and for paying [...]

In a victory for German Chancellor Angela Merkel , a package of constitutional reforms aimed at separating and clarifying the powers of the federal and state governments passed Germany's lower house of parliament in a 428-162 vote Friday, with three lawmakers abstaining. After World War II, Germany's government was organized under an inefficient system of [...]

A federal judge has extended a temporary restraining order preventing the state of Georgia from fully enforcing a law that restricts where convicted sex offenders can live. The restraining order issued Monday applied only to the eight plaintiffs in the case, but US District Judge Clarence Cooper in the Northern District of Georgia extended the [...]

The Turkish Grand National Assembly broadened the country's anti-terror laws Thursday by adopting new legislation that delays a suspect's guaranteed access to a lawyer for the first 24 hours of detention and expands the definition of offenses classified as terrorism. New acts classified as terrorism include human trafficking, drug smuggling, obstruction of education, influencing tenders, [...]

The French Senate and National Assembly gave final approval Friday to the so-called "iTunes" copyright legislation , meaning the bill will soon become law assuming the failure of a constitutional challenge filed last week by the Socialist party. The government still has the option of amending the bill before it is signed. Though the original [...]

The US House of Representatives voted 232-187 Thursday to approve the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act , which "provide for exploration, development, and production activities for mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf ." The bill, a version of which was approved in a House committee in October, would end the offshore drilling moratorium on [...]

Former East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri , who resigned on Monday , on Friday refused to respond to a prosecutor's summons to appear for questioning in connection with allegations that he organized and armed a private militia. Instead, Alkatiri wrote a letter back to prosecutors saying he is waiting for his lawyer, and that [...]

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples , a document which asserts that indigenous peoples worldwide should have the right to restitution of land and resources taken from them. Bypassing objections from Canada and Russia, the HRC voted by a margin of 30-2 to approve [...]