The US Senate voted Wednesday to continue the declassification of files that may reveal CIA agents who were hired despite their prior affiliation with the German Nazi party. The CIA reversed its objections last month concerning the disclosure of what former Nazis and Nazi SS officers did for the agency and its predecessor the Office [...]
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The Israeli Knesset Wednesday narrowly approved a measure to compensate Jewish settlers evacuating from the Gaza Strip. The bill passed 59-40, reflecting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "unity" coalition and amid protests from Sharon’s own Likud party and nationalist interests. This is seen as a major step in Sharon's plan to eventually cede Gaza Strip territory [...]
Jim Maule, Villanova Law School: "…ost, if not all, of the discussion presupposes continuation of the social security system, with changes in the way revenues are gathered to fund it. A few proposals discuss changing benefits, either in amount or by delaying the age at which a retirement payout would begin. There has been almost [...]
Kenneth Anderson, Washington College of Law, American University: I want to go back to something that everyone has already talked to death – the UN report from a week or two back concluding that although Darfur involves mass murder, it does not meet the legal definition of genocide. The reason why the UN experts concluded [...]
Peter Friedman , Case Law School: "Robert Novak outed Valerie Plame as a CIA agent, and yet Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller have to go to jail because they won't disclose their sources for the information that Novak published? In his concurring opinion to the D.C. Circuit opinion affirming the trial court's order holding Cooper [...]
Lawyers for Deutsche Bank told US Bankruptcy Judge Letitia Clark Wednesday that Russian oil company Yukos' request for bankruptcy protection should be thrown out for lack of jurisdiction . Yukos filed for US bankruptcy protection in December in a failed effort to prevent the auction of Yuganskneftegaz, it's main production arm. The Russian government ignored [...]
The corruption trial of former Turkish Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz began Wednesday, making Yilmaz the first head of government to be tried by Turkey's Supreme Court. Yilmaz and former Economics Minister Gunes Taner are accused of pre-determining the winner of the planned privatization of Turkey's state bank and using a mafia leader to scare off [...]
The US House of Representatives is set to vote Thursday on the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 , which will require multistate class action lawsuits to be brought in federal court. The measure, passed last week by the Senate , is expected to pass in the Republican-run House. Supporters of the bill say that [...]
National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman announced Wednesday that the 2004-2005 hockey season has been cancelled because the league and the NHL Players' Association could not reach a new collective bargaining agreement . The lockout over the salary cap was announced last September and continues despite last minute efforts by both sides to reach an [...]
The federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation Wednesday assigned all pending Vioxx product liability lawsuits to Judge Eldon Fallon of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans. Judge Fallon will coordinate discovery and other pretrial proceedings in federal lawsuits that allege that Vioxx manufacturer Merck knew the painkiller increased [...]
