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A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked a judge's ruling that it was unconstitutional for Congress to cut funding to the activist group ACORN. The ruling by the three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will remain in place until full arguments on the issue can be heard during the summer.

The fight against mandatory flu vaccines has just gotten a shot in the arm. An Albany judge has just issued a temporary restraining order preventing the state Department of Health from mandating flu vaccinations for health care workers in New York, according to lawyers in the case. Terry Kindlon, the lawyer representing nurses who filed a lawsuit this week, said Judge Thomas McNamara issued the order at a hearing Friday morning. The nurses argue the policy violates their civil rights. State Health Commissioner Richard Daines had imposed a regulation that required certain health care workers to be vaccinated by Nov....

When posting to FR are you getting “temporarily unavailable” messages when trying to post replies? Is your computer very slow like a snail on FR even though you have DSL?

WASHINGTON - Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), an Ohio Republican implicated in a lobbying corruption investigation, said Sunday he will step aside temporarily as chairman of the House Administration Committee. "Unfortunately it has become clear to me in recent days that the false allegations made against me have become a distraction to the important work of the House Republican Conference and the important work that remains ahead for the House Administration Committee," Ney said in a written statement. That was a reference to a scramble by Republicans in the House and Senate to come up with a new...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - United Nations delegates, welcome to ... Brooklyn? U.N. planners have found commercial space across the East River in Brooklyn that could serve as a temporary home while the United Nations' iconic glass-and-steel headquarters in Manhattan gets a long-overdue renovation, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report Tuesday. The report assessed where things stand with plans to renovate the U.N. secretariat building, which was considered modern when it was constructed 50 years ago but now violates most New York City fire and safety codes. The 38-story tower has no sprinkler system, is packed with asbestos, and loses...

SCOTIA, Calif. (AP) - State water officials ordered Pacific Lumber Co. to temporarily halt logging in Humboldt County on Wednesday after environmentalists filed a petition questioning the validity of the company's timber harvest plans. The State Water Resources Control Board issued the stay requested by the Humboldt Watershed Council and the Environmental Protection Information Center to suspend logging in parts of the Freshwater Creek and Elk River watersheds near Eureka on California's far northern coast. In February, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board agreed to allow Pacific Lumber to cut up to 50 percent of the annual 1,100-acre...

SACRAMENTO - Legislation that would allow an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants to get California driver's licenses was shelved temporarily Monday by a Senate committee, significantly reducing the amount of time to enact it this year. The measure by Sen. Gil Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, was placed on the Senate Appropriations Committee's suspense file, a standard procedure for bills projected to cost the state more than $150,000. The committee is tentatively scheduled to vote on suspense file bills Aug. 13, and the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn its 2004 session on Aug. 31. "It certainly shortens the window of opportunity to...

<p>The Supreme Court decision that affirmed the use of race as an admissions criterion at the University of Michigan law school already has conservative ideologues busily plotting ways to eliminate affirmative action. The Center for Individual Rights, which backed the white women who brought lawsuits against the university, threatened more lawsuits and ''close scrutiny'' of affirmative action plans. But it is California's Ward Connerly who's really audacious. He announced this week that he wants to export to Michigan California's Proposition 209, the measure he pushed that outlawed the use of race in admissions, employment and contracting.</p>