The US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday sentenced Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, to one year in prison, one year of supervised release and a $5 million fine for his securities fraud convictions. Gupta was convicted in June of three counts of securities fraud and one count of [...]

While the international community has come a long way in enacting legal standards to prevent torture and inhumane punishment, UN Committee Against Torture Chairperson Claudio Grossman said Tuesday that there are still too many states practicing torture . He said that while the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment [...]

US Attorney Preet Bharara on Wednesday filed a $1 billion civil lawsuit against Bank of America (BOA) claiming the bank committed fraud in residential mortgages. The claim was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and alleges that Countrywide Financial, a home mortgage originator subsequently purchased by BOA, [...]

The Dutch Rechtbank ‘s-Gravenhage court ruled Wednesday that Samsung Electronics did not infringe on a software patent held by Apple . Apple brought the suit alleging Samsung infringed on their patent concerning methods for user input and data manipulation through a “multi-touch” touch screen with their Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets running the Android [...]

New York’s highest court said Tuesday that it will not hear a challenge to the state’s Marriage Equality Act (MEA) , effectively dispelling the last viable threat to same sex marriages in the state. The New York Court of Appeals announced it will not hear a challenge to the law brought by the conservative group [...]

Uruguay President Jose Mujica on Tuesday signed a bill legalizing abortion. The bill provides no restrictions on abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. After the first 12 weeks it provides that women must go before a medical panel and go through a five-day “reflection” period before undergoing the procedure. This makes Uruguay only [...]

The US Supreme Court opted Tuesday not to act on a request to vacate a last-minute stay of execution order issued by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit , meaning the execution will not be carried out at least until next month. The determination not to act on this most recent order [...]

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a challenge to limits on the political contributions that donors can make to candidates running for Montana state offices. Montana’s campaign finance law limits the individual contributions to gubernatorial and lieutenant governor candidates to $500 and contributions to candidates for other statewide offices to $250. Earlier this month, [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Tuesday upheld an injunction on an Indiana law that would block Medicaid funding for abortion providers. The court found that the law, which would block federal and state funding to all “entities which perform abortions,” violated the Medicaid statute because it unjustifiably limited patient choice [...]

The Russian State Duma passed a bill on Tuesday that expands the definition of high treason. Treason was previously defined as espionage or assistance to a foreign state that damages Russia’s external security. The bill, which was passed by the lower house, expands the definition to include acts that compromise Russia’s constitutional order, sovereignty and [...]