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 ...

Two aid workers from Ireland and Uganda were kidnapped by armed men in Sudan's volatile Darfur region Friday, a source told AFP. "Unidentified armed men came to the quarters of the (Irish) NGO Goal at Kutum in Northern Darfur," the source said. "They took a Sudanese watchman, an Irishwoman and a Ugandan woman. The watchman was later freed." A UN official also confirmed the kidnapping. It was the third kidnapping of foreign humanitarian workers in Darfur since a March 4 arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court against Sudanese ...