Colombia has been facing armed conflict for decades without any sight of resolution. In June the country's Congress approved [JURIST report] a new law to provide a "Legal Framework for Peace" by a vote of 63-3. It is expected that the proposed law, backed by President Juan Manuel Santos [official website, in Spanish], will assist the government in engaging in peace negotiations with Leftist rebel groups including FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) [BBC backgrounders] and stop the violence in the country. In December the representative to Colombia for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official website] Christian Salazar called [JURIST report] for a peaceful solution to the country's ongoing violence. In June of last year President Santos signed legislation to compensate victims of the country's armed conflict after the Colombian senate passed [JURIST reports] it a month earlier. Multinational corporations have also been involved in the country's violence. The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit [official website] revived a wrongful death lawsuit [JURIST report] brought against Drummond Company [corporate website] for hiring Colombian paramilitaries to assassinate plaintiffs' fathers. In 2010 victims of paramilitary violence filed suit [JURIST report] against Chiquita Brand International [corporate website] in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida [official website] for funding a right-wing paramilitary group in Colombia that was accused of mass killings during the Colombia guerrilla warfare movement.

Privacy can be a nebulous legal concept and is often litigated. Last week the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] filed suit [JURIST report] in federal court against the new Stop Insider Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK Act) [S 2038, PDF] requirement that federal employees disclose all financial transactions over $1,000. The ACLU maintains the provision is an unconstitutional invasion of these employees' privacy because the STOCK Act requires that these disclosures be readily available on the Internet. That same week the ACLU announced [JURIST report] that its affiliates in 38 states had sent letters to local and state police departments asking them to clarify how they use information obtained from automatic license plate readers (ALPRs), cameras mounted near roads and highways that photograph and record license plate numbers. There the ACLU expressed concern that police departments are gathering and storing information about the travel patterns of all vehicles, regardless of whether they are vehicles of interest, alleging that "responsible deletion of data is the exception, not the norm."

In June AI urged the Israeli government to release all prisoners of conscience and other administrative detainees [JURIST report] or immediately try them under international fair trial standards. AI revealed that Israel has been using a number of laws, such as the Military Order 1651 and the Emergency Powers (Detention) Law, to detain only Palestinians despite its application to everyone. It also discovered that those who went on hunger strike were subject to ill-treatment and punishments. In May, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] called on Israel to try or release more than 1,000 prisoners [JURIST report] who had been on hunger strike to avoid health risks. Earlier the same month the Israeli Supreme Court [official website, in Hebrew] ruled against [JURIST report] two detainees who had been on hunger strike in their appeal seeking release from detention. During the same month, UN Special Rapporteur of the occupied Palestinian territory [official website] expressed its concern [JURIST report] for the continued human rights violations in Israel's prisons. It called the country to comply with the international standards of how to treat detainees.

RIM has had legal and financial difficulties over the last few years as patent litigation has increased and RIM's competitors have performed better in the ever-growing mobile communications market. Last month RIM and Apple [corporate website] won an appeal with the US International Trade Commission (USITC) [official website], which upheld a ruling by its administrative law judge (ALJ) that RIM and Apple did not illegitimately use digital image preview technology [JURIST report] patented by Eastman Kodak [corporate websites]. Specifically the ALJ had ruled that the Kodak patent claim in question was in fact infringed by Apple and RIM products, but that the infringed claim was invalid as obvious [35 USC § 103 text] under the combination of an earlier US patent and a Japanese patent application, meaning Kodak could not recover from RIM for infringement. In 2009 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] settled charges against four RIM executives [JURIST report] for stock options backdating. The four RIM executives were accused of backdating approximately 1,400 stock option grants to coincide with historically low closing prices of RIM stock.

Amateur and professional sports are an integral part of American culture, particularly among the country's youth who often look up to athletes as role models. The sponsorship, operation, advertising, promotion, licensure, and authorization of sports gambling in New Jersey would irreparably harm amateur and professional sports by fostering suspicion that individual plays and final scores of games may have been influenced by factors other than honest athletic competition. As Congress recognized when it enacted PASPA, the proliferation of sports gambling threatens to harm the reputation and goodwill of Plaintiffs, and to adversely affect the way the public views amateur and professional sports. Plaintiffs cannot be compensated in money damages for the harm that sports gambling poses to the character and integrity of their respective sporting events. Once their reputation and goodwill have been compromised, and the bonds of loyalty and devotion between fans and teams have been broken, Plaintiffs will have been irreparably injured in a manner that cannot be measured in dollars.

There is a presumptive prohibition on most forms of gambling in the US, although restrictions on some forms of Internet gambling were loosened late last year when the Department of Justice (DOJ) clarified that non-sports online gambling is presumptively legal [JURIST report]. JURIST Guest Columnist Patrick Fleming [official profile] argued that the decision bolstered the legitimacy of Internet betting [JURIST comment], yet the gambling landscape remains a patchwork of many distinct standards and statutory definitions. The DOJ has not commented on the recent New Jersey attempts to legalize sports gambling, nor whether they will take action against them in Federal court.

Abortion has been a controversial issue around the world. Earlier this month a Kansas judge refused to dismiss [JURIST report] a lawsuit challenging the state's new abortion clinic regulations after state officials asked that they be upheld without a trial. The law [SB36 materials] requires abortion providers to obtain an annual license and sets minimum requirements for staff members and buildings in which abortions are performed. In July the US District Court for the District of Kansas [official website] had issued [JURIST report] a preliminary injunction to block SB36. Also in July the US District Court for the District of Arizona [official website] declined to block [JURIST report] enforcement of a new Arizona abortion regulation [HB 2036 materials; JURIST report] that will ban abortions after 20 weeks unless there is a medical emergency. In May Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [official website, in Turkish] called [JURIST report] for stricter regulations on abortions and Caesarean births in Turkey. In September voters in Liechtenstein rejected [JURIST report] a proposal to legalize abortion.

GM became a government-backed company in July 2009 when the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] granted [JURIST report] the company's motion seeking the court's approval for sale of the automaker under US Bankruptcy Code Section 363 [11 USC § 363 text] to Vehicle Acquisition Holdings, a company set up by the US Department of the Treasury [official website] expressly to facilitate the sale. A few weeks earlier a federal bankruptcy judge approved [JURIST report] GM's motion to borrow $33.3 billion in debtor in possession financing from the US and Canadian governments to finance a new company. GM had filed [JURIST report] for Chapter 11 [text] bankruptcy in June of that year.

The current defendants were among the nine who were released [JURIST report] in February of last year amid organized peaceful rallies calling for the release of the remaining red shirt leaders. A month earlier the red shirts petitioned [JURIST report] the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website; JURIST backgrounder] to launch a preliminary investigation into whether the government committed crimes against humanity during the 2010 protests. The application for petition [text, PDF] cited specific evidence developing a substantial basis to show that international crimes of murder, imprisonment and other severe deprivation of physical liberty, other inhumane acts and persecution were committed in conjunction with the suppression of red shirt protest. In 2010 the red shirts initiated the protests [JURIST report] against the Thai government calling for elections. The protests ended two months after when protesters surrendered [JURIST report] to the police.

The national assembly was elected [CFR report] last month. The draft of the electoral law was finalized in February after the earlier version was revised [JURIST report] to address criticisms of the public. The finalized law provided for 20 percent of the 200 seats to be reserved for women, double of what was proposed in the earlier version. The UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) [official website] had welcomed [JURIST report] the new electoral law, commenting that the country is coming closer to a democratic society. Also in February the trial against Gaddafi allies was postponed [JURIST report]. The defense's pleading stated that the trial must be transferred to the civil court because the military court lacked the authority to rule on the issue. In January, Libya was criticized for the allegations of torture and human rights violations [JURIST report]. Although the NTC expressed its commitment to human rights and legal reformation, UN Security Council [official website] was still concerned due to the lack of NTC's control over the revolutionary brigades.

The DOJ is supporting its argument with Executive Order 13,567 [text], which was issued on March 7, 2011 and involves Periodic Review Boards (PRBs). PRBs are military panels in charge of deciding whether a petitioning prisoner should continue to be detained, as well as whether the prisoner is a national security threat. Specifically, the government contends that the order "does not provide detainees who undergo PRB review with a judicially enforceable right to counsel, or any justification for asking the Court to impose a counsel-access regime on the PRB process other than the one developed, per the Order's direction, by the Secretary of Defense." The case will require further interpretation of the Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene [JURIST report], where it held that federal courts have jurisdiction to review habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees who have been classified as "enemy combatants."