Currently, Vermont, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, Maine and Washington are the only states that recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships. The Washington State Senate passed a domestic partnership bill in March. Late last month, the New Hampshire Senate voted in favor of a bill already passed by the state House allowing same-sex civil unions. Also in late April, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer introduced a bill to legalize gay marriage in New York.

The Food and Drug Administration would have to establish a system to monitor the safety of new drugs after they hit the market and the pharmaceutical industry would be required to register clinical trials of new medicines in a publicly available database under legislation approved yesterday by the Senate.

The provisions are part of a sweeping bill, approved by a 93-to-1 vote, that would reauthorize the federal practice of charging drug makers hundreds of millions of dollars in fees each year to speed up FDA review approval of new drugs. The system of fees will expire Sept. 30 unless Congress reauthorizes it before then. The House has not yet taken up similar legislation.

The Senate bill also would enable the FDA to fine companies that fail to report contaminated food and require the government to establish labeling standards for pet food and to create a system to detect tainted pet food and notify the public of recalls.

It would provide for fines of up to $2 million for pharmaceutical companies that do not comply with the new system to measure the risks of new and high risk drugs in the first few years after they become available in the marketplace.

"This legislation is going to make the prescription drugs that families take safer and our food safer, and it's going to ensure that the agency has the resources to do follow-on reviews and continue to be the gold standard for safety," said Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and a lead sponsor of the bill.

Senator Mike Enzi, Republican of Wyoming , the chief Republican sponsor of the bill, said: "The changes made in the drug safety components of this legislation are critical to restoring peace of mind to Americans who want to be assured that the drugs they purchase to treat illnesses and chronic medical conditions can be relied upon and trusted."

Peter Lurie, deputy director of the health research group at the nonpartisan advocacy organization Public Citizen, agreed that the bill improves drug safety, but said lawmakers failed to address the core issue: that the FDA user fee system requires a regulated industry to fund its regulators.

"It is a fundamental conflict of interest to have an industry be able to dictate to an agency the speed at which reviews will take place," Lurie said. "And yet that's exactly what happens and nobody challenged that in a fundamental way."

The Senate legislation was shaped in part by an analysis by the Institute of Medicine last year that concluded the federal system for approving and regulating drugs is in serious disrepair. That report, requested by the FDA, followed two years of controversy over drug safety after the 2004 withdrawal of the arthritis drug Vioxx because of the risk of heart attacks.

Much of the institute report focused on a key gap in drug regulation: While the FDA requires stricter data on the safety and effectiveness from clinical trials before approving a new drug, less attention is paid after the drug reaches the market.

The Senate bill requires stepped up monitoring of new drugs for dangerous side effects and gives the FDA new authority to limit the sale of medicines if problems are found.

Drug makers could be required to undertake new studies of drugs after approval, and physicians who prescribe certain high-risk drugs would have to undergo special training.

A Conroe man who pleaded guilty to shooting a TCU football player to death last year has been sentenced to life in prison. Kasey Davis was a freshman kicker for the Horned Frogs.

Police say he was gunned down in a car by 42-year-old Jeffrey Clay Lasiter in January 2006 while home for Christmas break. The shooting appeared to be random.

The two men did not know each other. Lasiter pleaded guilty Monday before the start of his trial.

His attorneys had argued that the divorced, unemployed father of two suffers from a mental illness.

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit Tuesday denied a request by the city government of Washington, DC for an en banc rehearing of the court's March decision invalidating the city's handgun ban. DC Mayor Adrian Fenty expressed disappointment with the decision, saying that "The District's gun control laws have been a critical part of the City's public safety strategy for more than 30 years. I remain deeply committed to combating gun violence and vigorously defending the laws of the District of Columbia." The city now has 90 days to file an appeal with the Supreme Court.

The city petitioned the circuit court for an en banc rehearing last month, after a 2-1 panel vote in Parker v. District of Columbia held that the Second Amendment required the court to overturn a 31-year old ban on handguns in the District of Columbia. A Republican bid to overturn the DC gun ban legislatively passed the US House of Representatives in 2004 but failed to get Senate approval.

On July 1, 2007, Richard Levin will join Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP as a partner to head the Firm's newly established restructuring and insolvency practice. Rich, who served as counsel to a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee from 1975 to 1978, was one of the principal authors of the Bankruptcy Code and the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. He has significant experience guiding debtor and non-debtor clients through insolvency restructuring or reorganization, structuring and negotiating complex deals involving bankrupt companies and, where necessary, directing litigation in support of the negotiations. Rich joins Cravath from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, where he was a partner in that firm’s corporate restructuring department.

Since the REAL ID Act passed in May 2005, five states have passed anti-REAL ID legislation that rejects implementation of the Act. Most recently, Washington passed legislation with strong support that dictates that the state not spend any money implementing the REAL ID Act unless privacy and security concerns are addressed. Initially drafted after the Sept. 11 attacks and designed to discourage illegal immigration, the law attempts to make it more difficult for terrorists to fraudulently obtain US driver's licenses and other government IDs by mandating that states require birth certificates or similar documentation and also consult national immigration databases before issuing IDs. The law is also meant to make it more difficult for potential terrorists to board aircraft or enter federal government buildings. After controversy and strenuous opposition from civil libertarians, it finally passed in 2005 as part of an emergency supplemental appropriations defense spending bill. Other state lawmakers have previously expressed concern about possible problems expected to accompany the implementation of the REAL ID Act, fearing that they will not be able to comply with the law's requirements before a May 2008 deadline. In March, Homeland Security responded to these concerns by extending the deadline for compliance by 18 months.