A civil rights group on whose board Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor served filed racial bias lawsuits over employment examinations that resemble a Connecticut case in which she ruled against white firefighters, documents released by the Senate show. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Hispanic sanitation workers in New York City who wanted to stop white employees from getting promotions because, they argued, the qualifying exam unfairly disadvantaged minorities. The case unfolded as ...

A civil rights group advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the 1980s brought several discrimination lawsuits that sought to scrap the results of job tests because too few Hispanics scored well, according to new documents that are fueling GOP criticism of the judge. The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Hispanic sanitation workers in New York City who wanted to stop white employees from getting promotions because, they argued, the qualifying exam unfairly disadvantaged ...

An Irish aid worker has been kidnapped in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin confirmed Friday. "An Irish citizen has been kidnapped in the region," the spokeswoman said, after a source told AFP that two aid workers, one from Ireland and one from Uganda, had been taken by armed men from an office of Irish NGO Goal. "We don't have an embassy in the region but we have an honorary consul and he is actively pursuing the case. "The ...