US officials on Wednesday announced charges against seven individuals purportedly involved in a $62 million insider trading scheme. The individuals, who worked for five different investment institutions, are accused of earning illegal profits on the basis of insider information regarding publicly traded companies, including Dell Inc. and NVIDIA. US Attorney for the Southern District of [...]
The Ethiopian Federal High Court on Thursday convicted three Ethiopian journalists, a political opposition leader and a politician’s assistant for conspiring to commit acts of terrorism in violation of the country’s Anti-Terrorism Proclamation of 2009 . Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other advocacy groups have criticized the law as a violation of free expression and [...]
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani honored a summons issued by the Supreme Court of Pakistan by appearing Thursday to answer contempt charges brought by the court earlier this week . Gilani was ordered to appear to explain why he did not comply with court’s order to reopen a corruption case against President Asif Ali [...]
Chinese authorities on Wednesday sentenced a prominent rights activist to 10 years in prison, marking the third such sentence in a month. Dissident Li Tie was sentenced for subversion . The charges were brought in response to pro-democracy articles Li wrote in 2010. Li professed his innocence saying that his articles accorded with the Constitution. [...]
A panel of Australian citizens on Thursday proposed that the country’s Constitution recognize the Australian indigenous population , including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Currently, although Aborigines make up almost three percent of the Australian population, they are not mentioned in the constitution. The panel, consisting of Australian business executives, political leaders, Aboriginal leaders [...]
A coalition of Middle Eastern human rights organizations on Thursday accused all parties involved in the Libya conflict of human rights violations and crimes against humanity. Three organizations were involved in the fact-finding mission which resulted in the report: the Arab Organisation for Human Rights , the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the International [...]
A committee of the French Senate voted on Wednesday to oppose a law that would outlaw genocide denial , including the World War I-era killings of more than one million Armenians by Turkish soldiers. The proposed law , which was approved by the French National Assembly in December, sparked animosity in Turkey, which does not [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases on Wednesday, both dealing with different aspects of immigration. In Holder v. Sawyers , consolidated with Holder v. Gutierrez, the court heard arguments on whether alien children of legal residents can have their parents’ years in the country imputed to them for the purposes of [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in Maples v. Thomas that death row inmate Cory Maples sufficiently established cause excusing the procedural default rule when his attorney left his law firm causing Maples to miss a filing deadline. Maples’ attorney argued that he effectively had no local counsel, thus the lack of proper notification to [...]
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a case concerning whether a county board of commissioners in North Carolina violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by opening their public meetings with prayers. In Joyner v. Forsyth County, decided last July, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that [...]
