USA
The Supreme Court rejected a request by suspected enemy combatant José Padilla for an immediate decision on his detention. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who has been held in solitary confinement at a Navy brig in South Carolina since 2002, awaits a scheduled July 19 appeals court appearance. Federal officials have suspected Padilla, a convert to Islam, of plotting various terrorist attacks on US soil, but none was carried out. In an unrelated case, the court made it easier for California defendants to claim racial bias in jury selection.
Streets near the Neshoba County courthouse in Philadelphia, Miss., were barricaded as jury selection began in the trial of Edgar Ray Killen, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman accused in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, one black and two white. Killen was one of eight defendants to face charges in 1967. His case ended in a hung jury, while the others were convicted and served no more than six years. Killen is the only person indicted by the state in the case.
President Bush was to play host Monday to the leaders of five African nations : Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia, and Niger. Each held democratic elections last year, a development that Bush reportedly wants to underscore since leaders of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations agreed to erase more than $40 billion of African debt as a means of lifting the continent out of poverty. The occasion was also to be used as an opportunity to discuss increased US-African trade, especially with countries moving toward a market-based economy and the rule of law.
In an effort to salvage New York's bid to serve as host of the 2012 Olympics, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) said the city had negotiated a deal to allow the Games to use the stadium in Queens that's planned for the Mets baseball team. The arrangement substitutes for an Olympic stadium envisioned on the west side of Manhattan that was rejected last week by state lawmakers. The International Olympic Committee will select the host city from among New York, London, Madrid, Moscow, and Paris July 6.
Several SWAT teams, helicopters, and dozens of state troopers descended on a cockfighting pit in Newport, Tenn., over the weekend and arrested 114 people. Law-enforcement officials said the gathering may have been the largest in the nation for the illegal sport. Cockfighting is a misdemeanor in Tennessee and, if convicted, each of those charged could face nearly a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.