The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Friday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may use a report on menthol cigarettes. The tobacco companies argued that the report was written by experts with a conflict of interest and that the FDA should not be able to use it. The [...]

Florida’s Supreme Court on Friday denied a request from a death row inmate to delay his execution in light of the recent US Supreme Court ruling that Florida’s capital sentencing scheme was unconstitutional under the Sixth Amendment. Cary Michael Lambrix was sentenced to death in 1984 for two murders in Glades county and scheduled to [...]

A judge for the US District Court of the Middle District of North Carolina on Friday declined to grant a motion by the NAACP and other plaintiffs that would have kept the state from implementing their voter identification law in the upcoming March elections. The plaintiffs filed suit shortly after the law was enacted in [...]

The US Supreme Court on Friday granted certiorari in eight new cases for this term. In McDonnell v. United States , the Supreme Court is asked to decide the meaning of “official action” under the fraud statutes used to convict former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell for taking official action to benefit a benefactor. The US [...]

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette announced Friday that he plans to investigate the water contamination crisis in the city of Flint. The investigation is set to begin immediately as Flint residents are currently being forced to rely on bottled water for drinking, cooking and bathing. Schuette said, “s attorney general, I will investigate this situation [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein expressed his concerns on Friday regarding rising conflicts Burundi that have given rise to gang rapes, torture, ethnic repression, mass graves, and secret detentions and disappearances. Zeid reports that 432 people have been killed in Burundi since last April. He has called for the investigation [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of Louisiana filed a class action lawsuit on Thursday against the New Orleans Public Defenders Office and the Louisiana Public Defender Board due to the lack of available public defenders for individuals with no access to an attorney. The ACLU claims that as a result of [...]

A judge for the Superior Court of California in the County of San Francisco ruled Thursday that requiring a Catholic hospital to perform a tubal ligation sterilization would violate its religious freedom. The plaintiff, Rebecca Chamorro, requested to have the procedure performed at the hospital after the birth of her third child as a preventative [...]

The trial of former Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra began in the Supreme Court of Thailand on Friday, as she appeared in court to face corruption charges involving mismanagement of a rice-subsidy program. The charges against Shinawatra include dereliction of duty and failure to stop the corruption in connection with the rice-subsidy program, which is [...]

Brazil’s Federal Police have accused seven people and three companies of environmental crimes in its probe into the major Fundão dam collapse that occurred on November 5. The collapse, which has been termed the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history, released a flood of sludge burying rural villages, killing 19 people, and polluting more [...]