Leading Friday's states brief, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled today that Cedar Rapids does not have the authority to expand its control to include a preserve adjacent to the city because the city's extra-territorial jurisdiction does not extend to nature areas. The court said that while the Legislature intended to give cities extra-territorial jurisdiction over [...]

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Leading Friday's corporations and securities law brief, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) has agreed to pay Enron Corp. $250 million. The payment follows a a $2.4 billion settlement with Enron shareholders earlier this week. In a press release, CIBC said that this settlement, made in satisfaction of claims that the bank facilitated accounting [...]

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Friday rejected a US government plan that would have allowed vast undeveloped areas of the country's largest national forest to be open to logging. The Tongass National Forest in southern Alaska covers almost 17 million acres and is the world's largest [...]

Two technology privacy groups have asked the Federal Communications Commission to block a proposal that would give the US Department of Justice broad powers to listen-in on cellphone calls and monitor online computer activity by airline passengers. The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have joined forces in a petition , [...]

Ismael Diallo, Chief of the Human Rights Division of the UN Operation in Burundi , has deplored ongoing rights violations in the central African state, indicating that 53 summary executions of civilians were reported in Burundi in July 2005 alone. The majority of human rights violations have happened in Bujumbura Rural, a province west of [...]

Former WorldCom accounting executive Betty Vinson was sentenced Friday to five months in jail with an additional five months under house arrest for her role in the $11 billion fraud at the telecommunications giant that resulted in its bankruptcy. Vinson initially pleaded guilty to fraud in October 2002 and later aided the government's prosecution of [...]

Australian Prime Minister John Howard on Friday announced a planned summit meeting of Australian state leaders and security advisors next month to mull over ways to reduce Australia's vulnerability to terrorist attacks. Howard is debating whether terror laws should be strengthened following comments by some Australian Muslim clerics expressing support for Islamic jihadists attacking the [...]

The Pentagon has released 32 new or recently uncensored images of the coffins of US soldiers and agreed to quickly fulfill any future Freedom of Information Act requests for images of US war casualties. The release came as a result of a lawsuit filed by University of Delaware professor Ralph Begleiter , who was aided [...]

Iraqi leaders Friday put off a high-level constitutional meeting for two days while the Iraqi Kurdistan National Assembly convened in an emergency session and consultations between major players continued. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani had called the constitutional summit in order to break a deadlock regarding issues such as federalism and the potential influence of Islamic [...]