D.C.'s highest court has ruled against opponents of the city's same-sex marriage law, saying they cannot ask voters to overturn it. Opponents had wanted to challenge a law that took effect in Washington in March allowing same-sex couples to marry. They attempted to get approval to put an initiative on the ballot asking city voters to define marriage in the city as between one man and one woman.
Court strikes challenge to DC gay marriage law
Despite Settlement Freeze, Buildings Rise
When the freeze was announced, it came with the assertion that some 3,000 units were grandfathered in and would proceed during the moratorium.
David Ha’Ivri, spokesman for the Shomron Regional Council in the northern West Bank, said the leader of the council, Gershon Mesika, knew a freeze was coming and so approved more than 1,600 units in 2009, nearly 10 times the number that had been approved the previous year for his area.
Court rules torture lawsuits against UK continue
Former Guantanamo detainees can proceed with lawsuits accusing Britain of complicity in torture overseas, a High Court judge ruled Wednesday, rejecting a government request to suspend the action.
Britain had asked a judge to direct the six men, and six others who plan to launch similar cases, to halt their lawsuits and focus on reaching out of court settlements, allowing an independent inquiry into the accusations to begin.
US government lifts lid on alleged leak to WikiLeaks
Serviceman Bradley Manning, 22, faces two charges related to the illegal transfer and transmission of classified information from a US military network. The US said he was suspected of downloading from SIPR Net.
He reportedly then passed on the data, including army videos and diplomatic messages, to the WikiLeaks website. WikiLeaks has repeatedly said it does not have the confidential messages and the site itself is not mentioned in the charges against Private First Class (Pfc) Manning.
Flotilla journalists to sue Israel
A group of journalists has announced that it plans to sue Israel over its deadly raid on a flotilla of aid ships bound for the Gaza Strip in May. Lawyers have already begun preparing lawsuits in several European countries, according to several of the journalists, who met in Istanbul on Wednesday.
The group accused Israel of violating international law.
Israeli Navy surrounds aid vessel
The Israeli Navy reportedly blockades a Libyan-chartered aid vessel which has set sail for the blockaded Gaza Strip, issuing threats against the convoy.
The organization tasked the seaborne mission on board the Moldova-flagged cargo ship, Amalthea, to break Tel Aviv's years-long siege of Gaza. The vessel is carrying 12 crewmembers and 2,000 tons of relief supplies from Greece to the impoverished sliver.
IRAQ WAR DOSSIER 'FULL OF LIES'
THE Iraq war dossier was filled with “lies” about dictator Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the Chilcot inquiry heard yesterday.
Middle East expert Carne Ross accused the Blair government of presiding over a misleading document that had been re-edited.
Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair
The Palestinians of Gaza, most of them descended from refugees of the 1948 war that created Israel, have lived through decades of conflict and confrontation. Their scars have accumulated like layers of sedimentary rock, each marking a different crisis — homelessness, occupation, war, dependency.
Today, however, two developments have conspired to turn a difficult life into a new torment: a three-year blockade by Israel and Egypt that has locked them in the small enclave and crushed what there was of a formal local economy; and the bitter rivalry between Palestinian factions, which has undermined identity and purpose, divided families and caused a severe shortage of electricity in the middle of summer.
Diabetes Drug Maker Hid Test Data, Files Indicate
In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda.
Avandia’s success was crucial to SmithKline, whose labs were otherwise all but barren of new products. But the study’s results, completed that same year, were disastrous. Not only was Avandia no better than Actos, but the study also provided clear signs that it was riskier to the heart.
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