A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Monday dismissed a lawsuit against the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the agency’s failure to report Allen Stanford and his Ponzi scheme. Judge Robert Scola stated that the SEC market regulator was shielded under an exception to the Federal Tort Claims [...]

Antitrust officials for the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to block the proposed $11 billion merger between US Airways and American Airlines’ parent company, AMR Corporation . The lawsuit challenges a merger that would have created the world’s largest [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday insisted that US drone strikes must operate within international law. The secretary-general hailed the country’s lead role in UN peacekeeping operations and addressed the controversial weapons in a speech at the National University of Science and Technology in Islamabad, stating, “s I have often and consistently said, the use [...]

The Supreme Court of New Mexico ruled Monday that non-English speaking citizens can serve on juries. The ruling arose from a criminal case involving a defendant convicted of murder who appealed his conviction in part because the district court dismissed a prospective juror who was Spanish-speaking and had difficulty understanding English. While the Supreme Court [...]

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law on Monday intended to protect transgender public school students throughout the state. AB 1266 amends the state’s education code to specifically prohibit public schools from discriminating on the basis of gender identity and gender expression and allow students to participate in sex-segregated activities consistent with their [...]

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory on Monday signed a voter ID bill into law that will require voters to present government-issued photo identification at the polls. The law will effectively roll back the early voting period and repeal one-stop registration during early voting. The North Carolina General Assembly approved the bill last month, despite criticism [...]

Lawyers for the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Governor Tom Corbett argued In a legal filing on Monday that a Montgomery County Register of Wills decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples is a separation-of-powers violation that “risks causing serious and limitless harm” in Pennsylvania. Montgomery County court clerk D. Bruce Hanes issued 116 [...]

Russia’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday received the first official complaint against the country’s new law which requires political non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving funding from abroad to register as “foreign agents.” Kostroma Center was fined 300,000 rubles (USD $9,000) for organizing a roundtable with US diplomats, which investigators said counted as “political activity.” The Center filed [...]

US Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Monday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) should avoid charging low-level, nonviolent drug offenders with no ties to gangs or drug cartels with crimes carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Holder outlined additional reforms as part of his new “Smart on Crime” plan during his speech to the American Bar [...]

Laszlo Csatary, a 98-year-old Hungarian man charged with the unlawful execution and torture of people in connection with the Holocaust, died Monday after suffering a number of medical problems. Csatary died in a Hungarian hospital while awaiting trial, which was set to begin in September. Csatary was apprehended in Budapest in July 2012 and charged [...]