BOA has recently been the target of several lawsuits alleging fraud. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a lawsuit in mid-December against BOA for misleading customers [JURIST report] in mortgage modification and foreclosure practices. Earlier in the month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] reached a $137 million settlement agreement [JURIST report] with BOA over fraud charges [order, PDF] in a lawsuit that claimed BOA used anti-competitive bidding processes with 20 state municipalities. In June, BOA subsidiary Countrywide Home Loans, Inc reached [JURIST report] a $108 million settlement agreement [text, PDF] with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) [official website] in response to a lawsuit that charged it with collecting excessive fees from homeowners facing foreclosure.

The district court in Arizona urgently needs additional resources. Judicial vacancies need to be filled and new judgeships should be given strong consideration. There is also a need for more court staff and facilities.

The order declared the federal emergency would last for 30 days, but at the request of Judge Silver the Ninth Circuit Judicial Council extended the suspension for an additional year. The suspension will last until February 19, 2012.

The judicial emergency was one of the initiatives of Chief Judge John Roll [WSJ Profile], who was among the victims of the recent shooting [JURIST report] in Tucson, Arizona. Arizona federal courts have experienced a drastic increase in their federal criminal caseload due to illegal immigration [JURIST news archive] and drug trafficking. The Arizona federal court currently has three vacancies and is eligible for as many as five judgeships based on its case load. In the Tucson division, which handles the most cases, three judges are handling an average of 1,200 cases each. While the strain on the District Court in Arizona is front and center due to recent events, nationwide there has been a shortage of judges, and various legal groups have called on the President and Congress to make nominations and confirmations a top priority [JURIST report].

Hoi is among several dissidents in Vietnam who have been convicted for anti-government activity. In January 2010 a Vietnamese court sentenced [JURIST report] writer and democracy activist Pham Thanh Nghien to four years in prison on charges of spreading anti-state propaganda. That same month a Vietnamese court convicted four democracy activists [JURIST report] of subversion. Following the one-day trial, human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh [JURIST news archive] was sentenced to five years in prison. The four defendants were accused of activities aimed at ending communist rule in Vietnam. Dinh admitted to advocating multi-party democracy in Vietnam and joining the banned Democracy Party. Prior to Dinh's conviction, a Vietnamese court sentenced [JURIST report] pro-democracy dissident Tran Anh Kim in December 2009 to five and a half years in prison for subversion.

We are also clear that the current control order regime is imperfect and has not been as effective as it should be. We therefore propose to repeal control orders. Instead, we will introduce a new package of measures which is better focused and has more targeted restrictions, supported by significantly increased resources for surveillance and other investigative tools. Restrictions that have an impact on an individual's ability to lead a normal life should be the minimum necessary, should be proportionate and should be clearly justified. The legislation we will bring forward will make clearer what restrictions can and cannot be imposed.

In their current form, restrictions can include curfews, limits on internet access, restrictions on travel, and limitations on employment, school, access to bank accounts and contact with other people. Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] issued a report [text, PDF; JURIST report] in August calling for an end to the use of control orders against terrorism suspects, characterizing the orders as legal sanctions without trial. A month prior, the UK Court of Appeal [official website] ruled [judgment, text; JURIST report] that two terrorism suspects could sue the government for damages over wrongfully imposed control orders. In June The UK Supreme Court in ruled [JURIST report] that a control order requiring an anonymous appellant to live 150 miles from his family and operate under a 16-hour curfew violated his rights under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) [text]. In September 2009, then-Home Secretary Alan Johnson [BBC profile] said the government would undertake a review [JURIST report] of the system. The UK Law Lords ruled in October 2007 that the government may continue to impose control orders [JURIST report] on terror suspects in lieu of detention, but said that some elements of the orders violate human rights.

Last week, UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Navi Pillay [official website] announced that UN experts would be sent to Tunisia [JURIST report] to assess the human rights situation and meet with the country's interim leaders. Earlier in the week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon [official website] urged government leaders in Tunisia to initiate dialogue between all sides in an attempt to restore rule of law [JURIST report]. The Tunisia Constitutional Council officially announced earlier this month that Ben Ali had permanently left the office of the presidency after he declared a state of emergency [JURIST reports] and left the country. The council, the country's highest legal authority on constitutional issues, declared that the leader of the lower house of parliament, Foued Mebezza, will assume power [AFP report] until elections are held in two months.

Russia's lower house originally approved the treaty [JURIST report] in December. Earlier that month, the US Senate [official website] voted 71-26 [JURIST report] to ratify the treaty. US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the treaty [JURIST report] in Prague in April. The agreement, reached [JURIST report] last February, is the first nuclear agreement between the two nations in nearly 20 years. The US State Department began negotiating [JURIST report] the treaty with Russia in 2009. Nuclear disarmament between the US and Russia, whose nuclear arsenals comprise 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, languished during the Bush administration. The treaty is considered a key part of easing tensions between the two countries, which reached a high point after the 2008 Georgia conflict [BBC backgrounder].

The Assembly strongly reaffirms the need for an absolutely uncompromising fight against impunity for the perpetrators of serious human rights violations, and wishes to point out that the fact that these were committed in the context of a violent conflict could never justify a decision to refrain from prosecuting anyone who has committed such acts. There cannot and must not be one justice for the winners and another for the losers. Whenever a conflict has occurred, all criminals must be prosecuted and held responsible for their illegal acts, whichever side they belonged to and irrespective of their political role.

Former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte [BBC profile] alleged in a book [JURIST report] that approximately 300 Serbian and other non-Albanian prisoners were victims of organ trafficking during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, but that a 2003 probe by her ICTY team failed to obtain sufficient evidence to prosecute. In response, parliamentarians submitted a motion [text] in 2008 requesting that the Assembly investigate the organ trafficking charges. Del Ponte said reliable sources told her that members of the KLA took the organs of young, healthy prisoners for black-market sales [Kosovo Compromise report]. The Swiss Foreign Ministry later barred Del Ponte from promoting the book because it was inconsistent with her role as the Swiss ambassador. In March of 2008, the office of the Serbian war crimes prosecutor [official website] said that it was investigating "informal statements" [JURIST report] received from ICTY investigators alleging illegal organ harvesting. The next month, Serbia announced [JURIST report] that it planned to officially request that the ICTY resume a probe into the organ trafficking allegations, even though Kosovo Justice Minister Nekibe Kelmendi dismissed the allegations as "fabrications." The same month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] urged [JURIST report] leaders of Kosovo and Albania to launch an investigation into the allegations, but, as of May, had not received a response.