In a decision of sweeping importance, the Supreme Court today sharply limited the ability of school districts to manage the racial makeup of the student bodies in their schools.
Enforcing its edict against execution of the insane, a split Supreme Court today overturned the death sentence of Scott Louis Panetti, a delusional Texas murderer.
In a divided 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court overruled two school desegregation programs, in Seattle and Louisville, which created racial targets for school admissions. The decision in the consolidated case of Parents Involved v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education is the most significant ruling on race in education since the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, which upheld the use of race as a factor in school admissions.
As Wall Street had expected, the Federal Reserve left short-term interest rates unchanged this afternoon, keeping alive its yearlong pause. Chairman Ben Bernanke and the rest of the Fed's open market policy committee voted unanimously to keep the federal funds rate–the interest that banks charge one another–at 5.25 percent.
The long-awaited Ambient Umbrella is almost here. It is a bit offbeat, using lights in its handle to signal the chances of rain, but it's a taste of more mainstream products coming from Ambient Devices. The start-up is maybe best known for its Orb—and now is ready with a wave of what the company calls "zero-click" devices designed to take the pain from getting info from the Internet.
AP - President Bush's immigration plan to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants while fortifying the border collapsed in the Senate on Thursday, crushing both parties' hopes of addressing the volatile issue before the 2008 elections.
AP - President Bush, in a constitutional showdown with Congress, claimed executive privilege Thursday and rejected demands for White House documents and testimony about the firing of U.S. attorneys.
AP - The struggles of the nation's blacks — a loyal Democratic voting bloc — topped the agenda Thursday as the party's eight presidential candidates gathered for their third primary debate.
Army Sgt. Chris Tucker is a textbook case of the wear and tear of multiple deployments to Iraq and the strain this war has been on the men and women fighting it. He is also an example of a trend many in Congress and the military say leaves troops at greater risk in Iraq -- moving them away from their specialty to other duties.
The new Palestinian government is seeking "intensive and active cooperation" with Israel to ensure that the chaos that recently gripped Gaza does not re-emerge in the West Bank, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told CNN on Thursday.
A bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled race cannot be a factor when assigning children to public schools. The court struck down public school choice plans in Seattle and Louisville, concluding they relied on an unconstitutional use of racial criteria. Similar plans already in place across the country could now be threatened. "This is going to rank with the great decisions in the court's history, starting with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954," said CNN Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
![[logo]](http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/bbc_news_120x60.gif "BBC News")
![[logo]](http://www.csmonitor.com/images/logo_88x31.gif "Christian Science Monitor"){kind=logo}
![[logo]](http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/section/NytSectionHeader.gif "NYT > Home Page")
![[logo]](http://www.usnews.com/usnews/images/rss/logo_rss.gif "USNews.com"){kind=logo}
![[logo]](http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/nws/th/main_142b.gif "Yahoo! News")
![[logo]](http://image.guardian.co.uk/sitecrumbs/Guardian.gif "Guardian Unlimited")
![[logo]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/.element/img/1.0/logo/cnn.logo.rss.gif "CNN.com"){kind=logo}
