At the United Nations, Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan introduced a draft resolution Monday to expand the UN Security Council from 15 to 25 countries and give themselves permanent seats. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed changes to the Council in March and member nations have different ideas on how the body should be reformed. Italy recently [...]

Report on oil allocations granted to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Comittee, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, May 16, 2005 . Excerpt: This Report presents the evidence gathered by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (the "Subcommittee") establishing that Russian official Vladimir Zhirinovsky was granted lucrative allocations of oil from the [...]

AP is reporting that a military jury empaneled for the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse trial of Spc. Sabrina Harman has convicted her on six of seven counts. AP has more on Monday's closing defense arguments in her case at Fort Hood, Texas, which began last Thursday. 9:57 PM ET – Reuters now has more on [...]

Granholm, et al. v. Heald, et al., Supreme Court of the United States, May 16, 2005 . Excerpt from the majority opinion by Justice Kennedy: We hold that the laws in both States discriminate against interstate commerce in violation of the Commerce Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 3, and that the discrimination is neither authorized [...]

AP is reporting that Newsweek magazine has officially retracted its May 9 story that US personnel at Guantanamo had desecrated the Koran. Editors at the magazine began publicly backtracking from the story Sunday night after a source said he could no longer be certain that he had read of any such actions in Pentagon documents; [...]

Database giant Oracle has agreed to pay $8 million to settle a dispute over claims that the company fraudulently billed the US government for software training from 1997 through 2003. Former Oracle employee Robert J. Makheja, who claimed he was fired after challenging the company's billing practices, will receive $1.58 million in the settlement. The [...]

The former Nigerian education minister, former senate leader, and five other Nigerian lawmakers went on trial for corruption Monday in the capital city of Abuja. Ex-Education Minister Fabian Osuji is accused of paying a $400,000 bribe to parliament in order to get an inflated budget for his department passed. The trial is part of an [...]

Britain's General Medical Council , the body that registers and regulates British doctors, went to court Monday to clarify a 2004 ruling on a patient's right to treatment. Leslie Burke , who suffers from a degenerative brain disorder, obtained a July court order stating that if patients such as himself are no longer able to [...]

In a historic move Monday, the Kuwait National Assembly passed a law granting women the right to both run and vote in parliamentary elections. The legislation passed in the all-male parliament by a vote of 35 to 23 on an issue that had spurred strong reactions by conservative Islamists on one side and women and [...]

The US Supreme Court said Monday that it will decide whether states and counties can be sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act for not making accommodations for disabled inmates in prisons. The Bush administration filed an appeal in the case on behalf of an inmate seeking wheelchair accessibility in his prison. The case highlights [...]