At a landmark review conference of the ICC in Kampala, delegates are seeking to agree a definition of state aggression and how ICC investigations into the crime, one of four grave crimes the court has jurisdiction over, could be triggered.

The issue has divided delegates and NGOs over fears that giving the court powers to prosecute state aggression -- defined broadly as using force that manifestly breaches the UN charter -- could open it up to criticism of political bias and may again prove too divisive for full agreement to be reached in Kampala.

United States ambassador-at-large for war crimes Stephen Rapp warned late Tuesday about legal uncertainties over state aggression investigations and said that that pushing forward on the issue despite a lack of "genuine consensus" could undermine the ICC.

"What impact might the proposed definition, if adopted, have on the use of force that is undertaken to end the very crimes the ICC is now charged with prosecuting?" he said.

The United States withdrew its support for the ICC under then president George W. Bush in 2002, worried that its troops could face politically motivated prosecutions over unpopular wars, but has more recently started to re-engage with the court.

A lawyer has pleaded not guilty to charges she illegally disclosed confidential information regarding a teenage girl who converted to Christianity and ran away from her Ohio home.

Attorney Angela Lloyd entered the pleas Tuesday in Franklin County juvenile court after a magistrate approved bringing two misdemeanor charges.

Lloyd is accused of placing confidential child welfare reports into the public file of 17-year-old client Rifqa Bary (RIHF'-kuh BAYR'-ee), making them accessible to the media.

Bary fled central Ohio last year to stay with an Orlando, Fla., minister. She said she'd be harmed for converting from Islam. She has returned to Ohio, where her parents deny allegations she would've been hurt.

Lloyd's attorney, Jefferson Liston, says he doesn't believe Lloyd broke the law.

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to will decide whether student doctors are students or employees when it comes to collecting Social Security taxes.

The high court will hear an appeal from the Mayo Clinic of Rochester, Minn., and the University of Minnesota, which says the IRS shouldn't have made it collect the taxes.

Medical residents, who are studying to be doctors, routinely work in hospitals and pay income taxes. But Mayo Clinic officials say residents fall under a Social Security tax exemption for student employees whose work is part of their education.

The Treasury Department changed its rules to take away the student exemption for medical students who work more than 40 hours per week. The Obama administration said that Social Security taxes for medical residents can be as much as $700 million a year.

Mayo Clinic officials want the court to overturn a federal appeals court ruling and restore the student exemption for medical residents.

Universities, medical schools and hospitals backed Mayo, saying the issue is an important one and that federal appeals courts around the nation have reached differing decisions regarding medical residents.

Argument will take place in the fall or winter. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan would not take part in the case if confirmed because she signed the government's brief defending the IRS' position.

A taxi driver described as quiet but friendly went on a shooting spree across a picturesque rural area of northwestern England on Wednesday, killing at least five people and wounding 25 before apparently turning the gun on himself.

Officers found a body believed to be that of 52-year-old suspect Derrick Bird in woodland near the Lake District village of Boot, Cumbria police said. A gun was found alongside the body.

"I regret to report that a number of people have been shot and that at least five people have died," Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers in the House of Commons. "I can confirm that a body of a gunman has been found by police."

Police said that as well as the deaths, 25 people were wounded in shootings in the small town of Whitehaven and nearby Seascale and Egremont, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London.

The BBC reported there had been shootings in 11 locations, not all of them fatal. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting out the window of his car.

Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shot in the face, apparently with a shotgun.

Witness Alan Hannah told the Whitehaven News that he saw a man with a shotgun in a car near a taxi stand in Whitehaven. Photos showed a body, covered in a sheet, lying in a street in the town.

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in support of a father who sued anti-gay protesters over their demonstration at the 2006 funeral of his son, a Marine killed in Iraq.

Only Virginia and Maine declined to sign the brief by the Kansas attorney general.

Albert Snyder sued over protests by the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church at his son's funeral in Maryland. The church pickets funerals because they believe war deaths are punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality.

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the protesters' message is protected by the First Amendment.

In the brief filed Tuesday, the states argued they have a compelling interest in protecting the sanctity of funerals.

The presiding judge in the Rohm & Haas/Dow Chemical cancer cluster trial, which had been scheduled to begin on June 7, has set September 20 as the new trial date.

Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Allan Tereshko, in ordering the new schedule in the first of 31 related cases, cited “issues attendant to a trial of this magnitude and complexity,” including pending appeals filed by the defendant of pre-trial motions. The plaintiff in the trial is Joanne Branham on behalf of her deceased husband, Franklin Delano Branham, from McCullom Lake, Illinois.

All the plaintiffs (ten have died since the suits were filed) assert that Philadelphia-based Rohm & Haas, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow, poisoned the air and groundwater in the McCullom Lake community with vinyl chloride (among other toxic chemicals) discharged from its chemical-manufacturing plant into an unlined waste pit near their homes. They allege that prolonged exposure caused them to contract rare malignant brain cancers and brain tumors.

Mr. Branham was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a lethal form of brain cancer, in 2004, just a few years after he and Joanne relocated to Apache Junction, Arizona, near Phoenix. He died just one month after brain surgery. 

Contacts:
Aaron J. Freiwald, Esq.
ajf@layserfreiwald.com
215.875.8000
Stephan Rosenfeld (for Layser & Freiwald)
215.514.4101
steph@idadvisors.com

A federal judge has ruled two Connecticut public high schools can't hold their graduations inside a church because that would be an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall made the ruling Monday in the case of Enfield High School and Enrico Fermi High School, both in Enfield.

The Enfield school board says it voted to hold services June 23 and 24 at The First Cathedral in Bloomfield because it had enough space at the right price. But two students and three of their parents sued.

The judge says Enfield had unconstitutionally entangled itself with religion by agreeing to cover much of the church's religious imagery. She also says the town coerced the plaintiffs to support religion by forcing them to enter the church for graduation.