Several Bolivian opposition groups have said that the nation's new constitution is illegitimate, alleging that supporters of Bolivian President Evo Morales used legal loopholes to rush its approval. An International Crisis Group report released Thursday said the opposition may react to the constitutional reform attempts through violence. The opposition consists mainly of Unidad Nacional (UN), [...]
A representative for the US nursing home industry urged members of Congress Wednesday not to pass legislation that would eliminate the arbitration clauses which are typically part of admission contracts to nursing homes. In a joint meeting between the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition and Consumer Rights and the Special Committee on Aging , Kelley [...]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Thursday announced that more than 400 people had been indicted in connection to what has been termed the US "sub-prime mortgage collapse." The vast majority of the indictments involved fraud related to individual mortgages, with the FBI focusing on lending fraud, foreclosure rescue scams and mortgage-related bankruptcy schemes, which [...]
The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Wednesday criticized the government of Myanmar for its continued human rights abuses and refusal to cooperate with humanitarian groups. The resolution calls on the Myanmar government to free political prisoners, stop recruiting child soldiers and to implement earlier UNHRC resolutions regarding the country's human rights situation. The Council adopted [...]
A US military judge at Guantanamo Bay Thursday set October 8 as the date for the military commission trial of Canadian-born Omar Khadr . Khadr's military defense lawyer Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler said that judge Col. Patrick Parrish, who replaced Col. Peter Brownback as presiding judge last month, is pushing ahead to complete the [...]
Chief Justice Royce Lamberth of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held an off-the-record meeting Wednesday with defense lawyers for enemy combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay to discuss court procedures in light of the US Supreme Court's recent opinion in Boumediene v. Bush . The group reportedly discussed how Guantanamo [...]
Former Serbian chief of state security Radomir Markovic was sentenced to 40 years in prison Thursday for his role in a 1999 assassination attempt on then-Yugoslav opposition leader Vuk Draskovic . The Supreme Court of Serbia also sentenced ten other individuals, including special police commander Milorad Ulemek , for orchestrating a highway crash intended to [...]
Italy's highest court of appeal, the Court of Cassation , Thursday ruled that Italian courts lack jurisdiction to try a US soldier accused of shooting an intelligence agent in Iraq. Last year, Italian prosecutors filed an appeal of a Rome court's dismissal of the criminal case against US Army Spc. Mario Lozano for the alleged [...]
Malaysian rights group Suaram Thursday published its annual report on the state of human rights in the country, saying that conditions had significantly worsened over the past year. The group cited the country's judicial fixing scandal and lax prosecution of human rights offenders by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia as evidence of weak protections [...]
The Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) began investigating the country's Supreme Court Monday for suspected embezzlement . The Court collects administrative fees from appellants but has so far not accounted for the money. Late last month officials from Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) , an NGO that monitors government organizations for corruption, encouraged a KPK investigation [...]
