South Dakota voters Tuesday rejected a controversial law banning most abortions  passed by the state legislature earlier this year. With 818 out of 818 precincts reporting Wednesday, the final unofficial results for Referred Law 6 were:

NO 185948 56%
YES 148666 44%

The abortion ban, seen as a direct challenge to the US Supreme Court's abortion precedents, was placed on the South Dakota ballot after an advocacy group gathered more than 37,000 signatures on a petition to force a referendum. The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit had already upheld a preliminary injunction against the law's enforcement pending a lawsuit.

Dhiren Barot, a British man who pleaded guilty to planning a series of bombs on US and British targets, was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday. Barot was accused of planning several attacks, including the "Gas Limo Project" to blow up three limousines filled with explosives in underground parking garages in Britain.

Justice Butterfield of the Woolwich Crown Court handed down the sentence, saying a successful execution of Barot's plans would have resulted in a catastrophe on a "colossal and unprecedented scale." Prosecutors presented evidence that Barot wrote a proposal to obtain approval and funding for the plan from al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan. Barot pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for his involvement in the plot last month, but his seven co-defendants maintain their innocence.

Prosecutors also said Barot planned to detonate a bomb below the River Thames in an attempt to immerse the London subway system in water. In addition to attacks planned throughout the UK, prosecutors alleged that Barot planned to attack the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington DC, the New York  buildings in Newark, New Jersey. Barot was indicted in New York for the US-related bomb plans last April, along with two other men.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has dropped charges previously filed against ABC's "NYPD Blue" and CBS's "The Early Show," holding Monday that the shows were not indecent based on language content. The FCC also renewed charges against "The 2003 Billboard Music Awards" and "The 2002 Billboard Music Awards." According to the FCC order, the FCC dismissed the charges relating to the "The Early Show," deferring "to CBS's characterization of the program segment as a news interview" and concluding "regardless of whether such language would be actionable in the context of an entertainment program, that the complained-of material is neither actionably indecent nor profane in this context." The FCC upheld its charges against the "Billboard Music Awards" stating that "the use of offensive language by participants…was indecent and profane."

In April, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox filed appeals contesting the original FCC indecency rulings against the shows. The networks argued that the indecency findings for "fleeting" or "unintentional" profanities were inappropriate and that the FCC's inconsistent rulings chilled free speech in violation of the First Amendment. In July, CBS filed an additional appeal on the FCC decision to fine it $550,000 for an incident in the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast when performer Janet Jackson experienced what was later euphemistically labeled a "wardrobe malfunction"  that briefly exposed one of her breasts. A decision has not yet been made on that appeal.

The Australian Senate voted Tuesday to lift restrictions on stem cell research and permit the therapeutic cloning of human embryos. By a 34-32 vote, lawmakers approved the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Amendment Bill 2006, which also includes stricter penalties of up to 15 years in prison for anyone convicted of attempting to buy human egg, sperm or embryo faces.

Australia's parliament voted in 2002 to allow researchers to extract stem cells from extra embryos originally intended for use in in vitro fertilization, but did not permit the use of those cells in cloning. The Australian House of Representatives will consider the latest legislation later this month.

Thanks to "Google Bombing," or "Google Washing," an attempt to influence the page ranking in search results by clicking on certain articles or Web sites purposely and repeatedly, candidates' supporters can influence the kind of exposure their opponents get in the online world.

Since the 2004 U.S. presidential election, this new campaign tactic has become another major means for election campaigning along with the "old school" television advertisements.

It's the same kind of attack method, but a bit more subtle.

The new method became so popular that the term "Google Bombing" was introduced in the New Oxford American Dictionary in May 2005.

This is how it works: Depending on how many times a link is clicked in Google, its page rank goes up, and when the same words are searched, the search engine automatically generates on top of the list the page that was visited most often.

Taking advantage of this function, "Google Bombers" purposely click away on the same negative articles on candidates their choice is competing against, so that when voters log on to find out more information on candidates, they are met with unpleasant stories.

One famous example is on the U.S. President George W. Bush. You type in "miserable failure" and you are directed to many results linking you to the president.

It is unclear where those words came from but its first public application related to the Bush administration was by Dick Gephardt, who claimed during a discussion, "This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy; and on the economy. And he's got to be replaced."

The mid-term election is not an exception for manipulating Google data.

If you google George Allen, a Republican U.S. senator from Virginia who is running to keep his seat, many negative articles such as "Allen Quip Provokes Outrage, Apology" show up right below the link to his official Web site.

Google, one of the most powerful search engines, has responded that it will not alter the results (or other Google bombed results) because it wished to preserve the integrity of its search engine.

As for the new tactic's effectiveness, Chris Bowers, who is an author of the popular liberal blog MyDD.com and conceived of the Google Bombing project aimed at 70 Republican candidates, cast doubts.

"I think Internet users are very smart and most are aware of what a Google Bomb is," he said in an interview with the New York Times. "And they will be aware that results can be massaged a bit."

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced on Monday that the United States signed an Executive Agreement with Eurojust, the judicial cooperation unit of the European Union (E.U.), which will improve transatlantic law enforcement coordination and enhance the ability of the U.S. and the E.U. to fight international crime. The Agreement will foster the exchange of information between law enforcement communities in the U.S. and the E.U. and will strengthen cooperative efforts to prevent and prosecute organized crime, human trafficking, cybercrime and terrorism.

Specifically, the agreement establishes the position of U.S. Liaison Prosecutor to Eurojust. The Liaison Prosecutor will be based at Eurojust headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, and will facilitate law enforcement cooperation between the U.S. and the E.U. on a day-to-day basis. The Agreement particularly ensures the protection of personal information and individual privacy for both citizens of the U.S. and the E.U.

“This agreement is just one more example of the strong relationship that exists between the United States and the European Union on law enforcement issues,” said Attorney General Gonzales. “It represents an important part of our ongoing efforts to combat transnational crime and international terrorism while protecting the civil liberties of our citizens.”

The Executive Agreement was signed following troika meetings hosted by Attorney General Gonzales at the Department of Justice with Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Minister of Justice of Finland Leena Luhtanen, Minister of Interior of Finland Kari Rajamaki and Vice President of the European Commission Franco Frattini.

On Sunday, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging for the murders of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail following the 1982 assassination attempt on him.

After two days of anticipation of the Hussein verdict, civilians have been allowed back out into the capital and two other provinces, but vehicles remain banned until Tuesday morning. Police in Baghdad were allowing people to make essential journeys like going to hospital or buying provisions from shops that had opened. It has been reported that activity was already returning to the streets before the partial lifting of the curfew.

An automatic appeal will be launched against the sentence and is due to be heard by a panel of nine judges. If the sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days of the decision, meaning the hangings could therefore take place within two or three months.

The appeals process for the former Iraqi leader and his six co-defendants is expected to take only a few weeks. Two of the co-defendants were sentenced to death, one to life in prison and three to 15-year jail terms.

Saddam Hussein is due back in court on Tuesday when a separate trial for atrocities committed against Iraqi Kurds resumes, but Iraqi officials say the hanging would not be delayed artificially to allow this to take place. Some legal experts have argued that the Anfal killings trial should be allowed to reach a verdict before Saddam Hussein is executed. According to Saddam Hussein's defence lawyers, they have not received official notification of the death sentence, which they say is required before they launch their appeal. However, that is a technicality, and it shows how ineffectual a lot of the rules and regulations governing the trial process have been.

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Neal Andrea
Staff Writer