Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson expressed hope Monday that the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 people – including the gunman – dead in the largest shooting rampage in US history would prompt the United States to take action in support of an international arms trade treaty . [...]
An Argentine judge ruled Monday that former Argentine President Reynaldo Bignone should stand trial for the kidnapping of children of dissidents killed during Argentina's 1976-83 "Dirty War" . The children were allegedly given new identities after their kidnappings. Bignone also faces trial on separate charges connected to the illegal arrest, torture and killing of dissidents [...]
Lord Woolf , former Lord Chief Justice of English and Wales, told BBC Radio in an interview broadcast Tuesday that shifting the traditional position of Lord Chancellor into a new Ministry of Justice split off from the current Home Office represented a major constitutional change that should be undertaken only after serious study, and not [...]
Some 3000 Pakistani lawyers and anti-government activists demonstrated outside the Supreme Court building in Islamabad Tuesday as suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry arrived for his sixth hearing before Pakistan's Supreme Judicial Council on alleged judicial misconduct. Chaudhry was technically made "non-functional" by a March 9 order of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. No specifics were provided [...]
Ecuador's Constitutional Tribunal Monday reinstated some 50 members of the country's Congress dismissed last month by order of Ecuador's electoral tribunal after they were found to have illegally interfered with a referendum pushed by President Rafael Correa on whether to draft a new constitution . The referendum held April 15 resulted in a massive vote [...]
The three-drug "cocktail" used to execute death row inmates by lethal injection can fail, causing inmates to suffer a painful death, according to a study published Monday by PLoS Medicine . The study's authors said in a summary of their work: We were able to analyze only a limited number of executions. However, our findings [...]
An Indonesian court Tuesday acquitted American Richard Ness , the regional chief executive of Denver-based Newmont Mining Corporation , and Newmont's local subsidiary of criminal pollution charges . Ness and Newmont were accused of dumping arsenic and mercury into the waters of Indonesia's Buyat Bay. Prosecutors had requested a three-year prison term for Ness and [...]
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has settled accounting fraud charges against HealthSouth founder and former CEO Richard Scrushy under an agreement announced Monday "that permanently bars Scrushy from serving as an officer or director of a public company, permanently enjoins Scrushy from committing future violations of the antifraud and other provisions of the federal [...]
Thirty terror suspects were tortured by Afghan security forces after being being transferred from Canadian custody, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported Monday. The detainees gave accounts of being beaten, electrocuted, starved, and left in freezing temperatures while detained in Kandahar province jails. The report prompted calls for the resignation of Canadian Defense Minister Gordon [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in Brendlin v. California , 06-8120, in which the Court must determine whether an automobile passenger, convicted on drug charges resulting from an illegal traffic stop, may contest the legality of the stop under the Fourth Amendment . In 2001, Bruce Edward Brendlin was convicted in California [...]
