Amy Pisani : “In February of 2009 a special vaccine court exonerated vaccines in the debate over the causes of autism. The three Special Masters ruled that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR), given in combination with thimerosal-containing vaccines, does not cause, or contribute to, autism. The ruling was consistent with 18 major scientific studies which have [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced former IBM senior vice president Robert Moffat to six months in prison Monday and ordered him to pay a $50,000 fine for his role in the largest insider trading trading case in US history. In March, Moffat pleaded guilty to [...]

The US Senate Impeachment Trial Committee began hearing arguments Monday in the case against federal judge Thomas Porteous who is charged with perjury and accepting bribes from lawyers while a judge in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana . Porteous’s lawyer Jonathan Turley claimed in his opening statement that “Judge Porteous’s [...]

Representatives from Russia and Georgia appeared before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday for the beginning of a hearing to determine whether the court has jurisdiction to hear allegations that Russia committed human rights abuses following the secession of two sections of Georgia in the 1990s. The hearing was necessitated after Russia challenged [...]

Violent crime in the US dropped for the third year in a row, according to the annual crime statistics for 2009 , released Monday by the FBI. The FBI’s Crime in the United States, 2009 report showed a total 5.3 percent decrease in violent crimes between 2008 and 2009 to 1,318,398. Specifically, the number of [...]

A judge from Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Iran on Sunday released from prison Shiva Nazar Ahari, a journalist arrested following the 2009 presidential election , after she posted bail of USD $500,000, according to a local press reports. While Judge Pierre Abbasi has not yet issued a final ruling or announced Ahari’s [...]

The Iraqi government is unlawfully detaining and torturing thousands of detainees, according to a Monday report from Amnesty International (AI) . The report, “New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detention in Iraq” estimates that more than 30,000 detainees are currently being held in Iraqi prisons where they are tortured and mistreated, have no access to legal [...]

Constitutional amendments previously annulled by the Constitutional Court of Turkey were approved by a 58 percent popular vote Sunday, marking a major victory for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) . The vote, which took place on the thirtieth anniversary of the 1980 coup that ushered in the current constitution, permits the implementation of [...]

JURIST Guest Columnists Laurie R. Blank of Emory Law’s International Humanitarian Law Clinic and Amos N. Guiora of the University of Utah College of Law say that by continuing its deference to the executive in terrorism cases nine years after 9/11, the judiciary is abdicating its role in enforcing US domestic and international obligations… Nine [...]

An Icelandic parliamentary commission on Saturday recommended that the country’s former prime minister and three other former governmental ministers be tried for negligence for their roles in the country’s 2008 financial crisis. The nine-member Special Investigation Committee (SIC) published a 274-page report confirming a preliminary report published in April that found the extremely negligent actions [...]