Police in New Delhi, India on Saturday charged six men with the murder of a woman who died from injuries sustained in a gang-rape. The woman, a 23-year-old medical student, was gang raped on a bus in New Delhi on December 16 and died in a Singapore hospital on Saturday. The suspects, who were arrested [...]

The US Senate passed the Reauthorization Act of 2012 on Friday in a 73-23 vote to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008 (FISA) for five years. FISA grants the National Security Agency (NSA) the authority to conduct surveillance of Americans’ phone calls and emails in attempts to protect against terrorism and other [...]

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday temporarily enjoined the enforcement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (PPACA) contraceptives coverage mandate for an Illinois construction company. The company, owned by a Roman Catholic couple, claim that the mandate “substantially burdens their exercise of religion” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) . [...]

Philippine House Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales III announced on Friday that Philippine President Benigno Aquino III had quietly signed into law on the 21st of December a bill which will make contraception, birth control, sexual education, and maternal care universally available to all Filipinos. The law, known as the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act [...]

China adopted new rules on Friday which impose new restrictions on the country’s Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and individual users. The rules, called the Decision to Strengthen the Protection of Online Information, were adopted by China’s highest legislative body, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) , after one reading and without any public consultation. [...]

Lawyers representing the Mexican government asked the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in an amicus brief to uphold a lower court ruling that blocked enforcement of a section of the 2010 Arizona immigration law SB 1070 that prohibits the harboring of illegal aliens. In their brief, Mexico’s lawyers argued that the prohibition harms diplomatic [...]

A Moscow court on Friday acquitted prison doctor Dmitry Kratov of all charges stemming from the death of whistleblowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. A Russian judge found that there was no evidence showing a causal link between Kratov’s negligence and Magnitsky’s death. Dr. Kratov was the head of medical services at Butyrka Prison, where [...]

Apple Inc disclosed on Friday an agreement to withdraw patent claims against Samsung in the US District Court for Northern California for a new Samsung phone, Galaxy S III Mini, that the South Korea-based company said it was not offering for sale in the US market. Samsung began sales of the Mini in Europe this [...]

A Beijing court ordered Apple, Inc., on Thursday to pay damages of 1.03 million yuan, or $165,908 USD, to eight Chinese writers and two companies for copyright infringement. The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court , a regional court directly below China’s appellate level courts, held that software available on Apple’s app store contained unlicensed [...]

China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) on Friday passed amendments to a law allowing elderly parents to file suit against their adult children if they feel they have been neglected or abandoned by them. While the law mandates that adult children must visit and assist elderly parents on a regular basis, it provides no express provisions [...]