UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a statement Tuesday that 5,000 Rwandan refugees who fled to the Songore camp in Burundi to escape the 1994 genocide had been involuntarily returned to Rwanda on Sunday and Monday. Burundian authorities had declared the refugees "illegal immigrants" over the weekend. UN officials alleged that the government actions [...]

The opening of the Sudanese domestic tribunal created to try 160 alleged Darfur war criminals that was originally set for Tuesday has now been delayed until Wednesday, according to court chairman Mahmud Saeed Abkem. No reasons were given for the delay but Abkem said the hearings would be "public and open." Sudan Justice Minister Ali [...]

Leading Tuesday’s corporations and securities law news, the SEC announced today that it had reached an agreement with Ford Motor Credit Company over illegal marketing of the “Ford Money Market Account.” The agreement includes $700,000 in fines, an agreement to cease and desist the marketing practices, and a series of remedial reforms. The SEC charged [...]

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a Pentagon news conference Tuesday that the US government had gone to great length and enormous expense to ensure that terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay were well-treated and that there was no reason to consider closing the military detention center despite increasing pressure from some politicians and human [...]

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe announced Tuesday that his administration is planning to draft a bill which would effectively disband the right-wing paramilitary fighters supported by umbrella group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) . The US recently criticized the Colombian government for its leniency towards the paramilitary groups, which were created in the 1980s to [...]

Leading Tuesday's states brief, the Supreme Court of Ohio heard arguments today in a case concerning the visitation rights of grandparents. Since the 2002 US Supreme Court decsion in Troxel v. Granville Ohio courts have issued conflicting rulings on the state's custody law. The grandparents are appealing the decision of the Court of Appeals Ninth [...]

A New Jersey appellate court Tuesday ruled against seven same-sex couples who had argued that they were entitled to marry under the state constitution . The court ruling upheld a lower court decision that had concluded that state legislators must first change marriage laws in New Jersey before same-sex marriages would be allowed. AP has [...]

Financial filings released Tuesday show that Bill and Hillary Clinton have finally paid off the legal bills incurred during Whitewater and the impeachment scandal. Lucrative book contracts and numerous speaking arrangements helped settle their debt, the result of assembling a costly legal defense team that was built up during the six years an independent counsel [...]

A US federal court judge Tuesday renewed for a fouth time a restraining order prohibiting former UN Oil-for Food Independent Committee Inquiry investigator Robert Parton from releasing confidential documents to the two US congressional committees that had subpoenaed the documents . Parton took the boxes of documents after resigning from the inquiry committee in April [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, the Argentine Supreme Court has struck down the nation's two amnesty laws preventing former military and government officials from being investigated and prosecuted for alleged crimes and human rights abuses during the 1970s and '80s military dictatorship and the anti-leftist campaign called the Dirty War . By a 7-1 margin with [...]