A federal jury in California awarded Alcatel-Lucent $1.52 billion dollars in damages Thursday for violations of two of Alcatel-Lucent's digital music patents committed by Microsoft . The patents govern technology that converts audio input into MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly known as MP3, which Microsoft has incorporated into several variants of its Windows Media [...]
US Army Sgt. Paul E. Cortez received a 100-year prison sentence Thursday for his role in the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in the Mahmudiya (also "Mahmoudiya") area last March. Cortez pleaded guilty earlier this week to felony murder, rape and conspiracy to rape. He will [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Kent Roach of the University Toronto Faculty of Law says the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that security certificates for the indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects are unconstitutional may help propel new Canadian anti-terror legislation, although the travails of that for Canada's minority Conservative government may be greater than those encountered [...]
A group that advocates the therapeutic use of marijuana is suing the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services for their statements that the drug has no medical value. According to a complaint filed Wednesday in US District Court in San Francisco, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) alleges that [...]
Caroline Fredrickson : "When the 109th Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in September of last year there was a fear in the legal and human rights communities that this meant that detainees held in Guantanamo Bay and other facilities would be stripped of their due process rights. The Military Commissions Act gave the president [...]
A US federal judge Thursday sentenced former South Korean lobbyist Tongsun Park to five years in prison for his conviction on charges of money laundering, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and acting as an unregistered agent of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Prosecutors accused Park of receiving about $2 million from Hussein in exchange for [...]
Authorities in Colombia Thursday arrested a former intelligence chief on charges of murder and conspiracy for allegedly contracting with illegal paramilitary groups to assassinate political opponents, including human rights activists and union leaders. Jorge Noguera ran the Department of Administrative Security until he resigned in October 2005 after he was tape-recorded while discussing plans to [...]
Indonesia has convicted and jailed at least 18 people for advocating a sovereign government for the province of Papua , according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Wednesday. The report states: Although political space for dissent in Indonesia has increased enormously since the fall of Soeharto, broadly worded laws limiting freedom of expression [...]
Alleged terrorist Jose Padilla is unfit to stand trial, forensic neuropsychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty testified at a court ordered competency hearing Thursday. Hegarty testified that she determined from 22 hours of interviews and tests with him that Padilla is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from his years in detention and is unable to assist in [...]
Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday on charges of insulting Islam and causing sectarian strife in his blog . Nabil, a 22-year-old former law student, had posted on the internet statements critical of Islamic authorities and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak , calling him a dictator. Nabil also allegedly [...]
