Telecommunications company Qwest on Friday explained its decision to deny the National Security Agency (NSA) access to its customers' telephone records in contrast to competitors AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth which allowed that. According to a company lawyer, former Qwest CEO Joseph N. Nacchio concluded that "the requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act [...]

Members of a European Union delegation currently in the US to investigate reports of secret CIA prisons in Europe for the European Parliament have complained about non-cooperation by US State Department officials after a meeting to discuss alleged renditions . Claudio Fava , who will write the final European Parliament report, said US officials gave [...]

A UK bill that would let British doctors present the option of assisted suicide to patients with less than six months to live who are experiencing "extreme suffering" stalled Friday in the British House of Lords . After spending the day debating whether it was ethical to allow the terminally ill to be administered drugs [...]

US government lawyers urged a federal judge Friday to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed by Khalid el-Masri against former CIA director George Tenet and other CIA officials. El-Masri is a German national who alleges he was kidnapped in Macedonia in 2003, held by the CIA in Afghanistan and finally released in 2004 and dropped off [...]

Finland's parliament on Friday voted to approve the stalled European Constitution , taking an initial step toward ratifying the constitution. Ratification will occur following the approval of the cabinet and a second formal vote in parliament and would make Finland the sixteenth European country to endorse the constitution. Finland will assume the EU presidency for [...]

A lawyer for former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma , who earlier this week was acquitted in a rape case , called for Zuma's upcoming corruption trial to move quickly through the court system in order to avoid disrupting his client's goal of attaining a leadership position in the African National Congress. Zuma, who [...]

The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) and the Connecticut Bar Association have filed a lawsuit arguing that the new federal bankruptcy law enacted in October 2005, unlawfully impedes the attorney-client relationship by restricting the advice lawyers may give to their clients, and by failing to differentiate between attorneys and unlicensed document preparers or [...]

UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron on Friday demanded a repeal or revision of the 1998 Human Rights Act following a High Court decision to allow nine Afghani airplane hijackers to remain in the United Kingdom rather than deport the convicts back to Afghanistan for fear they would be tortured in their home country. UK [...]

South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-Suk was indicted Friday on charges of fraud, embezzling research funds and breaching bioethics laws. Hwang announced in 2005 that his research team had created patient-specific stem cell lines along with having produced stem cells from a human embryo. A report by scientists at Seoul National University later discredited both claims. [...]

As expected , corruption charges against former Indonesian dictator General Suharto were dropped Friday after a court determined last month that Suharto was unfit to stand trial . Suharto was ousted from power after 32 years in 1998 amid violent protests against his three-decade dictatorship that used security forces to stifle dissent and allegedly embezzled [...]