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While the current incident may appear at first to be minor, Guinea has a history of unrest. In September Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] called on the Guinean government to further its support [JURIST report] for the prosecution of crimes originating from a 2009 massacre. In 2010 a commission created by Guinea's junta announced that former Guinean junta aide Lieutenant Aboubacar Cherif "Toumba" Diakite is the sole government official to blame for the massacre [JURIST report]. The commission's conclusion contradicted a UN report [JURIST report] that blamed military junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara [BBC profile], Minister for Special Services Moussa Tiegboro Camara and Toumba for the September 28 slayings. In October 2009 the International Criminal Court placed the Guinean military under preliminary investigation for human rights violations related to the Conakry incident, and the UN and Guinea both announced they were creating commissions to investigate [JURIST reports] the killings.

Hydroelectric dam projects have received significant scrutiny from Chilean courts in recent years. In May the Supreme Court of Chile [official website, in Spanish] issued a ruling [JURIST report] preventing the construction of a new hydroelectric dam in Patagonia over environmental concerns. In April the Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that a hydroelectric dam in Patagonia by HidroAysen [project website, in Spanish], a private Chilean venture, did not violate the constitutional rights of the environmental groups opposing the project. In June 2011 a Chilean appeals court ordered the temporary suspension [JURIST report] of the USD $10 billion HidroAysen project, approving three petitions challenging government authorization of the dam construction and granted the plaintiffs' petition for injunction. The court lifted the temporary suspension [Reuters report] in October 2011 allowing work on the project to move forward and spurring a constitutional challenge by environmentalists.

The treatment of albinos in Tanzania is one of many human rights issues that Pillay has addressed recently. Last week Pillay presented [JURIST report] an annual report outlining the "daunting" human rights crises that occurred in 2012, including armed conflicts in Syria, Palestine, Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Last month Pillay urged [JURIST report] the international community to continue to prevent human rights abuses and hold perpetrators accountable. Speaking to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Pillay specifically mentioned the ongoing situations in Rwanda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Palestine, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Sudan and Syria. Also in February Pillay expressed concern [JURIST report] over reports that three Palestinians being held in Israeli custody are in poor health from hunger strikes protesting Israel's use of administrative detention. Pillay also released a report [JURIST report] criticizing Sri Lanka for failing to investigate widespread reports of killings and other atrocities during the 26-year civil war it fought with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The same month, Pillay expressed shock and sadness [JURIST report] concerning the brutal rape and murder of 17-year-old Anene Booysen in South Africa and urged the country to take a stronger approach to prevent sexual violence.

Numerous states have changed their abortion laws recently to impose more restrictions on the availability of abortions, leading to several legal challenges. In December a state judge in Georgia enjoined a law [JURIST report] banning doctors from providing abortions for women more than 20 weeks into gestation, which would have gone into effect in January. Montana voters in November passed a referendum [JURIST report] requiring facilities and doctors to inform parents of minors 16 to 48 hours before a planned abortion procedure on the minor. Also that month, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] heard oral arguments [JURIST report] on a challenge to Arizona's law which, like Arkansas and Georgia's laws, bans abortions after 20 weeks. Planned Parenthood [advocacy website] also sued Texas [JURIST report] in October claiming that its law preventing state funding from going to any clinics affiliated with providing abortions violates another state law.

A Maldives court issued a second arrest warrant [JURIST report] for Nasheed last month, which led to his arrest Tuesday. Nasheed was also arrested [JURIST report] in October for leaving the capital city of Male in contravention of a court summons and a court-imposed travel ban. Nasheed failed twice to appear in court to face abuse of power charges. Earlier in October a three-judge panel was forced to postpone the first day of Nasheed's trial after he violated his travel ban [JURIST report], leaving Male in a boat that day in order to campaign in the Maldives' southern islands. A week earlier, the Hulhumale Magistrate Court had issued an order prohibiting Nasheed from leaving the city [JURIST report] without official permission. Nasheed's supporters claimed that the move was politically motivated to limit the former president's ability to campaign for the upcoming election.

The five-year prison terms handed down over the Kabul Bank fraud have been criticized as too lenient [AP report]. By comparison, in the US the disgraced financier Bernard Madoff [JURIST news archive] was sentenced in June 2009 to 150 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to 11 counts [JURIST reports] of securities fraud stemming from his Ponzi scheme believed to have defrauded investors of over $65 billion. While the $900 million fraud in Kabul pales in contrast to the multi-billion-dollar Madoff figures, the Kabul Bank collapse represented as much as five percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, imperiling the nation's entire economy. Furthermore, the Afghan government is largely funded by foreign donors, many of whom may limit or cancel their financing should they perceive that the government is not adequately prosecuting fraud such as that at Kabul Bank.

SB 1070 has gained notoriety for its controversial provision requiring law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of persons they stop or arrest if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the US illegally. In June the US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [JURIST report] in Arizona v. United States [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] to strike down sections of the Arizona law, but upheld the controversial portion allowing police officers to check immigration status of anyone arrested. Currently, the Ninth Circuit is considering another questionable provision of the law that prohibits the harboring of "unlawful aliens." The harboring ban had been in effect since SB 1070's inception in July 2010 until it was struck down [JURIST report] by the US District Court for the District of Arizona in September. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer [official website], who signed the bill into law, appealed [JURIST report] the lower court's injunction in late September.

Warding off this mistaken inference, the Government asserts, §1089(e) eliminates any doubt that the military medical personnel covered by §1089(a) are personally immune from malpractice liability. Ensuring that immunity, the Government reminds us, was the very purpose of the Gonzalez Act.

The choice between these alternative readings of §1089(e) is not difficult to make. Section §1089(e)'s operative clause states, in no uncertain terms, that the intentional tort exception to the FTCA, §2680(h), "shall not apply," and §1089(e)’s introductory clause confines the abrogation of §2680(h) to medical personnel employed by the agencies listed in the Gonzalez Act.

The Government invites us to read the phrase "section 2680(h) . . . shall not apply," to convey "§2680(h) does apply," a reading most unnatural.

The court ruled in favor of Steven Alan Levin, who appealed to the court pro se [JURIST report] from the US territory of Guam. Levin, a Navy veteran, sued after he claimed that Navy surgeons performed cataract surgery on him without his consent. Levin, who has neither telephone nor Internet, has not commented on his victory.

The court on Monday denied certiorari in Crawley v. Minn [cert. petition, PDF; docket], which would have examined the First Amendment [text] implications of criminalizing criticism of the police in some situations. The Supreme Court of Minnesota upheld [opinion] Minnesota statute § 609.505 (2) [text], which criminalizes falsely reporting police misconduct: "[w]hoever informs, or causes information to be communicated to, a peace officer, whose responsibilities include investigating or reporting police misconduct, that a peace officer ... committed an act of police misconduct, knowing that the information is false, is guilty of a crime." The court held that the law criminalizes defamation and is not in violation of the First Amendment.