Judge Simeon Lake of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas on Friday reduced the prison sentence of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling from more than 24 years in prison to 14 years. As a term of the deal reached between Skilling and the government, more than $40 million of Skilling’s fortune, [...]
A new anti-piracy bill allowing for websites to be blocked by Internet service providers (ISPs) upon copyright infringement claims passed through its final two readings in Russia’s State Duma on Friday. Under the terms of the new bill , failure to remove site content suspected of infringement within 72 hours would result in the entire [...]
UN Independent Expert on human rights in Sudan , Mashood Adebayo Baderin, said Friday after his third visit to Sudan that the human rights situation in the country has undergone positive improvements, but expressed his concern about the ongoing hostilities in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan States. Baderin acknowledged the significant improvement in access [...]
Moroccan courts are relying too heavily on coerced confessions and delaying trial proceedings, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Friday, calling for reform of the country’s judicial system. The 131-page report, entitled “Just Sign Here: Unfair Trials Based on Confessions to the Police in Morocco,” examines numerous cases in which the judicial system violated due process [...]
Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit Thursday over a new Kansas law passed in April requiring doctors to inform women seeking abortions that they are ending the life of a “whole, separate, unique, living human being.” Since Governor Sam Brownback signed the legislation , Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri (PPKM) , the plaintiff in the [...]
Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Duma , on Friday unanimously approved a ban on the adoption of orphans by foreign same-sex couples and single foreign nationals who reside in countries where same-sex marriage is legal. The bill will need approval from the upper house and President Vladimir Putin , processes that are often times [...]
The Tokyo District Court on Friday issued a partial verdict for Apple in a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung concerning technology which triggers a bounce-back animation when one scrolls through to the end of a digital documents on older mobile devices. The court has yet to provide a date for when it will issue its [...]
The US government has charged former government contractor Edward Snowden with espionage for leaking top secret documents, according to a sealed criminal complaint filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia . The complaint charges Snowden with unauthorized communication of national defense information, theft of government property, and willful communication of [...]
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Thursday that it has officially approved the brand-name emergency contraceptive Plan B Onestep for all women of child-bearing potential without a prescription, regardless of age . This approval comes following an order issued last week by Judge Edward Korman of the US District Court for the Eastern [...]
The upper house of Japan’s National Diet, the House of Councillors on Friday gave final approval to legislation aimed at combating bullying . The law defines bullying that causes serious mental or physical harm as “serious.” Under the new legislation, schools must report serious cases to the appropriate governmental bodies and set up investigative panels. [...]
