New York Judge Faviola Soto has ruled that New York City must enforce a law that requires companies which do business with the city to give the same benefits to same-sex couples that they give to spouses. Mayor Michael Bloomberg had vetoed the Equal Benefits Law saying it would limit its ability to choose bidders [...]

Iranian judiciary officials announced Tuesday that a group of pro-reform journalists will stand trial next week on charges of spreading propaganda against the Islamic government. The journalists, who wrote for Internet-based news organizations or maintained web logs, have all been arrested since September. Human rights groups, as well as some reformists in the Iranian government, [...]

In Tuesday's corporations and securities law news, the SEC is considering bringing civil charges against two former executives of Lucent Technologies Inc. and a third unidentified person over violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by allegedly participating in a bribery scheme involving Saudi Arabian officials. AP has more. In other news, Bank of New [...]

A retired military officer appeared in a Ghana court Tuesday to face charges of plotting to destablize the government ahead of a presidential election. Nicholas Owuba was formally charged with illegally purchasing military supplies and weapons possession. Owuba was one of seven arrested over the weekend as part of the alleged plot (see this Paper [...]

The International Committee of the Red Cross Tuesday urged parties engaged in fighting in the Iraqi city of Fallujah to avoid killing or harming civilians contrary to international humanitarian law. The ICRC call came as US Central Command denied media reports that a government clinic in the city had been bombed by US planes during [...]

The Federal Communications Commission Tuesday exempted emerging Internet-based phone services from regulation by state authorities, a decision expected to increase the services' growth. Phone regulation has traditionally been left to the states, but the FCC ruled that Voice over Internet Protocol services, such as Vonage, are not linked to particular states. Opponents have argued that [...]

Lawyers for accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui have sought to further delay the start of his trial while they pursue an appeal of pretrial issues to the US Supreme Court. Moussaoui's attorneys argued for the delay in a Monday filing responding to an effort by the US government to set a May trial date. According to [...]

An Indonesian court Tuesday threw out a $107 million lawsuit brought by Islamic cleric Abu Bakar Bashir (profile from BBC News) against Time magazine. Bashir filed suit against the magazine seeking for linking him to terrorism in a 2002 article on an alleged plot to bomb US embassies in southeast Asia. The court dismissed the [...]

In a second opinion handed down Tuesday morning, the US Supreme Court held that federal law governs maritime contracts when the dispute is not inherently local, that a broadly written clause limiting liability in a bill of lading can be extended to cover multiple forms of transportation, and that when an intermediary contracts with a [...]

In a decision handed down Tuesday morning, the US Supreme Court has ruled that a conviction for drunk driving that results in serious bodily injury is not a "crime of violence" that constitutes an "aggravated felony" under the Immigration and Nationality Act and therefore can't lead to the deportation of a permanent resident involved in [...]