The UK High Court on Tuesday suspended enforcement of a regulation requiring airlines to compensate passengers for flights that are delayed for more than three hours, until the European Court of Justice (ECJ) releases a new ruling on the issue. In November, the ECJ ruled that airline passengers confronted with flight delays of three hours [...]
Hezbollah officials on Tuesday submitted evidence to the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) linking Israel to the the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri . The submission was in response to a request by the tribunal last week for Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah to turn over all information he possesses to [...]
Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that a portion of the tax code requiring same-sex partners in a civil union to pay a larger inheritance tax than partners in opposite-sex marriages is unconstitutional. Under Germany’s current tax code, citizens in homosexual civil unions are required to pay between 17 and 50 percent for an inheritance [...]
Former INTERPOL president and South African police chief Jackie Selebi on Tuesday filed for leave to appeal his sentence and conviction. A spokesperson for the South African National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) confirmed that they received his application and that they would be opposing the appeal. Selebi was sentenced earlier this month to 15 years in [...]
A federal judge on Monday rejected a $75 million settlement reached between Citigroup and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month to resolve charges of misleading investors about Citigroup’s exposure to sub-prime mortgage-related assets. Citigroup represented that its sub-prime exposure was $13 billion or less, when it was more than $50 billion at [...]
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday issued an emergency stay pending an appeal of a federal judge’s decision overturning Proposition 8, the California ban on same-sex marriage . The stay will prohibit California from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples while the court of appeals considers [...]
The US District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday released a partially redacted opinion ordering the release of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif for lack of evidence. The district court granted Latif’s habeas corpus petition in July, but the ruling was not made public until this week. Judge Henry Kennedy [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Missouri on Monday ruled that Missouri laws restricting protests near funerals are unconstitutional. Judge Fernando Gaitan held that two 2006 laws banning protests at funerals violated the US Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech. The court concluded that prosecutors failed to show [...]
The Supreme Court of Mexico ruled 9-2 on Monday to uphold a Mexico City law allowing adoptions by same-sex couples. Justices in the majority found that same-sex adoptions do not violate the Mexican Constitution , which, regardless of the familial structure, provides equal protections to heterosexual couples, single mothers, divorced parents, grandparents and same-sex couples. [...]
US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced Monday that environmental reviews will be required for all new deepwater drilling, temporarily halting exemptions that allowed oil companies to drill without environmental impact statements. The process for exemptions was created under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and required exemptions to be offered based on data [...]
