A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday ruled that the New York Police Department (NYPD) stop-and-frisk policy violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments . The use of the “stop-and-frisk” tactic was popularized during the Mayor Michael Bloomberg administration, and over the past decade the city has [...]

A human rights activist for Frontline Defenders reported Friday that the lawyer representing a Bahraini blogger held by authorities has been detained himself days after alleging his client had been tortured while in police custody. Abdul Aziz Moussa is representing Mohamed Hassan, who acted as a media contact point for various foreign news stories, which [...]

Harbinger Capital filed $1.9 billion dollar lawsuit Friday against Deere & Co and global positioning system (GPS) companies, including Garmin International and Trimble Navigation Ltd. , claiming the defendants bankrupted the wireless company LightSquared . Harbinger claims in the suit that it never would have invested in Lightsquared had the GPS industry disclosed the potential [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday issued a statement urging Egyptian political parties to avoid provocations and consider approaches that would foster an inclusive political process favoring reconciliation. Tension and political divisiveness in Egypt has continued following the military’s ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi . The statement said: “The Secretary-General’s immediate concern is for [...]

US President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law H.R. 1911, the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013 , lowering interest rates on student loans. The interest rates will drop to 3.86 percent for undergraduate students and 5.41 percent for graduate students. However, the bill ties the interest rates to fluctuations in the financial [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated on Sunday that the Islamic State of Iraq , a suspected al Qaeda branch, had committed crimes against humanity during the July 29 bombings in Iraq. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for a series of car bombs implemented to aid a prison raid. The July 29 bombings killed [...]

Independent UN experts on Friday called for the repeal of recently passed legislation in Uganda limiting the size of public demonstrations. Known as the Public Order Management Bill, passed on Tuesday , Uganda now prohibits protests of more than three people without prior police authorization. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret [...]

A federal judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday denied Apple‘s request for a temporary suspension of the court’s July ruling that Apple violated the Sherman Act and various state statutes in an e-book price-fixing conspiracy. Despite Apple’s continued denial of the charges, US District Judge Denise [...]

The International Trade Commission (ITC) on Friday ruled that Samsung infringed two patents of Apple . The two patents involves the detection of users’ finger movements on smartphone touchscreens and the way its plugs detect when other devices have been plugged in. The ITC, however, rejected four other patent infringement claims against Samsung. With the [...]

President Barack Obama on Friday gave a speech proposing a four-step reform to increase the credibility and legitimacy of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) . The first step will reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act , which involves the collection of telephone records, giving the public “additional confidence [...]