Laws

New federal protections for credit card users go into force today, but in advance of the tougher rules, banks have been raising fees and interest rates -- hoping to ensure that one of their historically most lucrative businesses remains that way. Since Congress approved the landmark credit card overhaul legislation last spring, many issuers of plastic have jacked up interest rates, switched accounts from fixed to variable rates, and raised annual...

Nicaragua's total ban on abortion is a violation of human rights and is killing a growing number of women and children, Amnesty International said Monday in launching a campaign to have the measure repealed. In a report released in Mexico City, the international human rights organization said Nicaragua's law, which went into effect in late 2006, puts the Central American country among the 3% of the world's nations that do not allow abortion under any circumstance.

Maribel Pantoja sat nervously on an examination table, awaiting word from her doctor about a painful wound on her left leg. Because she speaks only Spanish, there is usually an added level of anxiety when she visits a clinic. But a new first-in-the-nation state law requiring health insurers to provide interpreters for members with limited English skills spared Pantoja the confusion of trying to communicate with her doctor Tuesday.

The police in Greenfield, a Monterey County farm town, had heard the rumors before: Migrant workers from rural Mexico were marrying off daughters as young as 12 and receiving sizable dowries. But no such cases were ever prosecuted -- until this week. Marcelino de Jesus Martinez, 36, is in Monterey County Jail, charged with crimes related to an alleged attempt to set up a marriage for his 14-year-old daughter.

Dozens of new state laws take effect today that could make things tougher for gang members, smokers and kangaroos while providing new protections for nursing home residents, shoppers and misbehaving celebrities. In addition, California workers who earn the minimum wage will get a raise from $7.50 to $8 per hour starting today, tying California with Massachusetts for the highest state minimum wage in the nation. That change, affecting 1.

The vacation sort of just flew by. After dropping their packs at a hostel, Ryan Ainsworth and his buddy Richie Bendelow found a shop selling 500 herbal potions that promised to make them high and happy in 500 ways. But the young British tourists went right for the hallucinogenic mushrooms, packaged in clear plastic containers just like the ordinary ones at the greengrocer back home. The pair took the tips sheet that advised first boiling the mushrooms into a tea "to speed up the effect."

Dianna Dapkins thought the Internet would be the perfect place to find a rare Croatian wine that her local merchants in rural Shelburne, Mass., don't stock. Sure enough, K&L Wine Merchants, an Internet retailer that also has stores in Hollywood and San Francisco, sells the Plenkovic Zlatan Plavac Barrique for $34.99. Dapkins clicked on the wine to buy it but said she was stunned when the website would not let her complete the sale. "It is really frustrating," she said.

Heidi Marie Petersen's knowledge of strategy and spreadsheets at a board meeting in Norway last year made a male colleague sit up and take note. "Wow! You actually know something about business," the man said after the meeting, Petersen says. The 49-year-old mother of two now serves on the boards of 11 companies, including Norsk Hydro, Europe's second-largest aluminum producer, and Aker Kvaerner, Norway's biggest engineering company.

In 2002, California's HMO czar, Daniel Zingale, declared, "The days are over when they could make patients wait and wait for healthcare." Zingale was heralding a new law that required his department to ensure that HMO patients received timely appointments with doctors. The law was spawned by the case of a 74-year-old woman who died from an aneurysm in a Kaiser Permanente waiting room while pleading to see her physician.

A federal judge Thursday upheld a controversial new Arizona law that mandates the closure of businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake rejected the arguments of business and immigrant-rights groups, which sued saying the law was an unconstitutional usurping of the federal government's right to regulate immigration. "The act does not make employers conform to a stricter form of conduct than federal law," Wake wrote in his 37-page decision.