Lower House

After a long, bruising political battle, the lower house of India's parliament on Wednesday passed a civilian nuclear liability bill that would pave the way for American and other foreign companies to join a nuclear-reactor building spree. As if to punctuate the need for more electricity generation in a nation where power outages are a daily event, the lights went out in the Parliament building just as the bill was brought to a vote. "This is why we need nuclear energy," said one lawmaker to general laughter.

France is one step closer to allowing couples of the same sex to wed and adopt children after its Senate on Friday approved a landmark bill to legalize gay marriage. Justice Minister Christiane Taubira , a supporter of the bill, said legalizing gay marriage and enshrining adoption rights “is an act of freedom, it is an act of equality, and it is an act of brotherhood” (link in French). “Marriage becomes a universal institution,” she added. Polls have shown that a majority of the French support gay marriage, but are divided on granting adoption rights to partners of the same sex. The Socialist government of President Francois Hollande has backed the “marriage for all” legislation through fervent protests by religious conservatives in the traditionally Roman Catholic country, a split reflected in the 179-to-157 Senate vote.

MOSCOW - Russian lawmakers this week passed three measures to increase government control over the Internet, media and foreign-funded activist groups, despite widespread protests from Web professionals, journalists and human rights advocates. A bill that criminalizes libel and imposes fines of up to $153,400 on violators, and a measure that requires nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, that receive foreign funding to register as "foreign agents," were approved by the lower house of the parliament Friday, the last day of the legislative session.

PARIS - French riot police battled Sunday with anti-gay marriage protesters who forced their way onto the world famous Champs Élysées. The demonstration was a last-ditch attempt to stop a bill backed by France's Socialist government that will allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt children. The National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament, approved what is known as the "marriage for all" legislation with a large majority last month. The bill will face a final vote in the Senate, the upper house, on April 4. Both houses are dominated by French President François Hollande's Socialist party and its allies.

Three years after a stinging defeat in the presidential election, Mexico's former ruling party inched closer to a majority in Mexico's lower house of Congress, a sign that it will be even harder for President Vicente Fox to accomplish his goals before he leaves office in 2006. According to a high-ranking federal electoral official, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, won 224 seats in the House of Deputies -- 27 spots short of a majority.

An outside challenger won the coveted post of speaker of Brazil's lower house of Congress, handing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his Workers' Party their biggest political defeat since he took office in 2003. Severino Cavalcanti of the small, right-leaning Progressive Party defeated Lula's choice, Luiz Eduardo Greenhalgh, on promises to promote legislative independence from the executive branch.

The lower house of Russia's parliament approved the draft 1999 budget in its third reading, but a top official said Russia will have to wait months for desperately needed foreign aid. First Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Maslyukov said the International Monetary Fund was prepared to give Russia loans only after the Cabinet has implemented the budget for three months to prove its feasibility.

Japan's lower house passed a bill to make it easier to impose economic sanctions on North Korea, a step aimed at pressuring Pyongyang to hand over relatives of Japanese abducted decades ago and account for the fate of others. The bill does not name North Korea, but lawmakers say it is aimed at the reclusive state. Officials in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's government also have said they don't have any plans to impose sanctions but want North Korea to agree to talks on the abductions.

Germany's lower house of Parliament voted 515 to 58 to approve a new European Union treaty, easily clearing the necessary two-thirds majority. That reflected wide political support for the treaty in the EU's most populous country. It now goes to the upper house, representing the country's 16 state governments, where it is expected to pass easily in a vote May 23. The treaty alters the EU's decision-making process, envisaging more decisions by majority vote rather than unanimous endorsement.

The lower house of parliament today passed a set of three bills that will give Japan its highest defense profile since World War II. The measures will pave the way for the nation's military to provide noncombat support far from the country's shores for U.S. forces retaliating for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Virginia.

In a key victory Tuesday for same-sex couples in France, a measure allowing them to marry and adopt children passed the lower house of Parliament, the National Assembly. The measure, pushed through by the Socialist administration of President Francois Hollande, passed by a vote of 329 to 229. It now goes to the Senate, which is also controlled by the Socialists and their allies. A vote is scheduled for April 2. If the bill passes in the Senate, France will join 11 other nations, including Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and South Africa, where same-sex marriage is legal.

MOSCOW - Russia's parliament took a first step Wednesday toward banning the adoption of Russian children by American parents, a move intended as retaliation for an anti-corruption law recently passed by Congress. The State Duma, the lower house of parliament, voted 399 to 17 in favor of a bill that included the ban and also would annul an adoption agreement between the two countries that Russia ratified in July. The measure still has to be approved by the upper house and signed by President Vladimir Putin, who has sent mixed signals about his support.

SACRAMENTO - The next class of the Legislature will be stocked with a new variety of lawmaker, the product of a new political order intended to foster moderation, compromise and foresight in an institution not known for such things. Able to serve longer in one house under revamped term limits, the newly elected will have time to develop expertise. They may well be more accountable to voters because their seats will no longer be safe as they were when districts were gerrymandered to maintain the status quo. And their moderation, born of more balanced districts and nonpartisan primaries, can serve as a check on Democrats' emerging supermajorities in both houses.

MOSCOW - A prominent opposition activist was stripped of his seat in the lower house of the Russian parliament Friday, a move that heightens concern the Kremlin will continue its aggressive crackdown on political dissent. Gennady Gudkov, 52, a protest movement leader and member of the opposition Just Russia party, was expelled by a 294-151 vote of the State Duma, controlled by President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. Gudkov, once an ally of Putin, called the action political vengeance by the Kremlin.

SACRAMENTO - Lawmakers gave raises worth $4.6 million annually to more than 1,000 of their aides before cutting the pay of most other state workers, newly released records show. The lawmakers said they were trying to make up for several years without staff pay increases. "Modest adjustments based on individual performance were appropriate," after pay and hiring freezes during the previous four years, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said in a statement.

MOSCOW - Russian lawmakers this week passed three measures to increase government control over the Internet, media and foreign-funded activist groups, despite widespread protests from Web professionals, journalists and human rights advocates. A bill that criminalizes libel and imposes fines of up to $153,400 on violators, and a measure that requires nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, that receive foreign funding to register as "foreign agents," were approved by the lower house of the parliament Friday, the last day of the legislative session.

California's 80-member Assembly has been called disorderly, dysfunctional and as unruly as an elementary school playground during a food fight. The inner workings of the Legislature's lower house can be ugly, its members concede, but they say that merely reflects the messy nature of democracy in a state as diverse as California.

SACRAMENTO - Reacting to public outrage over legislative perks, a state panel decided last year to cut lawmakers' monthly car allowance to $300, but a legal glitch has allowed some to get up to nine times that amount. The Citizens Compensation Commission, which is appointed by the governor, had hoped to save taxpayers money when it voted to set the $300 limit and take state-issued cars away from lawmakers. But the attorney general's office later determined that the panel did not have the authority to approve the allowance.

On Monday, the French Senate is scheduled to debate and possibly vote on a bill that would criminalize denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915, along with any other events recognized as genocide in French law. The bill has passed the lower house of Parliament. The Senate should reject it, in the name of free speech, the freedom of historical inquiry and Article 11 of France's pathbreaking 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen ("The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights.…")