Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic began his defense case before the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Monday with testimony of Mile Sladoje, a former Serb army officer who claimed that he was never ordered to shoot civilians during the the 1995 Srebrenica massacre . Mladic faces an 11-count indictment, [...]
Minnesota lawmakers on Friday approved a bill legalizing medical marijuana in pill or liquid form for a limited number of patients who suffer from severe or fatal illnesses. The state’s Senate voted 46-16 and the House voted 89-40 to approve the bill with bipartisan support. Governor Mark Dayton has said he will sign it into [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay announced on Friday that her 34-member monitoring team in Ukraine has produced a report showing an “alarming deterioration in the human rights situation in the east of the country, as well as serious problems emerging in Crimea, especially in relation to the Crimean Tatars.” The report, which [...]
The first multilateral meeting on lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) concluded on Friday at the UN headquarters in Geneva. The main objectives of the meeting , attended and sponsored by signatories of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) , were to discuss key issues surrounding the use of LAWS, such as how the development [...]
The Utah Supreme Court issued a stay on Friday temporarily halting adoptions by second parents in legally wed same-sex couples. In December, the US District Court for the District of Utah ruled that Utah’s constitutional and statutory bans on same-sex marriage violate due process and equal protection . In light of the court’s overturning the [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Friday affirmed a $5.1 million fraud judgment against Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM). Hi-Lex , a car parts manufacturer, sued BCBSM for carrying on in bad faith regarding its Administrative Services Contract (ASC) by which BCBSM provides health insurance to Hi-Lex employees. Specifically, [...]
In a joint motion to dismiss , Apple and Google agreed Friday to end all mobile technology patent litigation between Apple and Motorola. Furthermore, each company agreed to bear its own expenses after the dismissal is final at the district court level. This comes as a surprise, as the US Court of Appeals for the [...]
The US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday ordered officials in Guantanamo Bay to temporarily suspend forced feedings of a Syrian prisoner kept at the detention facility on Guantanamo Bay. Syrian national Abu Wa’el Dhiab has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 after being arrested in Pakistan on suspicion to terrorist [...]
French police on Tuesday arrested in Strasbourg seven men who were suspected of fighting alongside rebels within Syria. The arrest was conducted by French Police special unit Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (RAID) , and no weapons nor explosive devices were found in possession of the suspects. Upon their arrest a formal investigation into the suspected [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday temporarily stayed an order finding Idaho’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. Judge Candy Dale of the US District Court for the District of Idaho struck down the laws on Tuesday, and the state immediately filed a motion to stay the ruling . The Ninth Circuit [...]
