New Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has announced he will focus on fighting corruption, which Iraqi and US officials say is rampant in the government. The problem is a long-standing one, but documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that it has become pervasive, manifested in everything from government contracts to the purchase of [...]

A Los Angeles lawyer on Tuesday became the third person to plead guilty in connection with alleged kickbacks at Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman , the leading class action law firm that was indicted last week. The US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said Richard R. Purtich funneled $879,868 to a former [...]

The US detention center in Guantanamo Bay is a legal black hole, an Australian High Court judge has said. Justice Michael Kirby made the statement Monday in a speech to the Sydney Peace Foundation . David Hicks , an Australian who is awaiting trial before a US military commission on charges of aiding al Qaeda [...]

German police may not trawl databases to identify possible terrorists without a specific threat to national security, human life or freedom, the German Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday. "A general threat situation, of the kind that has existed continuously in regard to terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, or external political tensions, is not sufficient," the [...]

Ethiopia's Federal High Court has postponed a verdict in the genocide trial of former dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam until next January. The announcement of the verdict had been scheduled for Tuesday. Even though the trial has lasted 12 years, the delay was necessary for the court to review new defense evidence, according to the head [...]

Author Studs Terkel and other Illinois residents are suing AT&T to bar the phone company from handing over customer records to the National Security Agency (NSA) without court oversight. The putative class action lawsuit , filed Monday in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois , seeks declaratory and injunctive relief but not [...]

Lee Boyd Malvo testified Tuesday in a Maryland court against John Allen Muhammad in Muhammad's second trial involving the murder of six people in Maryland during a three-week shooting spree in the Washington, DC area in 2002. Malvo testified that Muhammad planned to "terrorize" the nation prior to the sniper attacks and had outlined a [...]

At least 127 democracy activists held by the military junta in Myanmar have died from "torture or ill-treatment," according to a report released Tuesday by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) . The report by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro , UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, calls for an independent inquiry into the [...]

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Chief Judge Calvin Johnson has said that the city will resume holding criminal trials next week as the New Orleans court system continues to recover from Hurricane Katrina . As many as 6,000 suspects have been in jail for months awaiting trial; many of the suspects continue to wait for [...]

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has brought its first enforcement action under the USA Patriot Act against Los Angeles brokerage firm Crowell, Weedon & Co. , the largest independent investment firm in the western US. The SEC issued a cease-and-desist order Monday against Crowell for failing to document its customer identification procedures for [...]