Mississippi voters on Tuesday approved the Mississippi Voter Identification Petition by 62 percent, creating a new requirement that voters show government-issued photo identification at the polls. The ballot included a disclaimer explaining a government-issued photo identification costs approximately $14. Several rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi (ACLU-MS) and the Mississippi National [...]

New Jersey voters on Tuesday ratified Public Question 1 by a 65 percent margin, amending the New Jersey constitution to legalize sports gambling in the state despite a continued federal ban. The referendum, in defiance of the federal Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act , will not go into effect unless the state wins a [...]

Mississippi voters on Tuesday rejected a ballot measure that would have amended the state constitution to define the word “person” or “persons” to include “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.” The initiative, which would have given fetuses rights from the moment of conception, was defeated by more [...]

Two former Bernard Madoff investors filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase & Co (JPMC) Monday seeking recovery of $19 billion for allegedly aiding Madoff in orchestrating his Ponzi scheme. The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York , claimed JPMC willfully ignored signs of fraud [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases on Tuesday. In US v. Jones , the court will decide whether the government’s warrantless use of a global positioning systems (GPS) tracking device on respondent’s vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment . The government argued that under US [...]

A UK court ruled Tuesday that Catholic priests qualify as employees, meaning that the Catholic church could be held liable for sexual abuse by clergy members . A 47-year-old woman filed suit against the Portsmouth Roman Catholic Diocesan Trust claiming that she was sexually abused by the Reverend Wilfred Baldwin during her childhood in a [...]

The UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on Monday ruled that Ieng Sary , former deputy foreign minister of the Khmer Rouge regime is not protected from genocide charges by a 15-year-old royal pardon and amnesty. The court ruled that his amnesty does not apply to the crimes of genocide, torture or [...]

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced Tuesday that the death toll of Syrian protesters has exceeded 3,500 despite last week’s signing of a peace plan sponsored by the League of Arab States . In the past week alone, approximately 60 people have been killed by military and security personnel, included [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on Tuesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit against a former Somali military colonel. The defendant, Abdi Aden Magan, who now lives in Ohio, is charged with torture in connection with actions that allegedly occurred during the military dictatorship of Mohammad Siad Barre. [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday in Greene v. Fisher that, for purposes of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), “clearly established federal law” is limited to Supreme Court decisions “as of the time of the relevant state-court adjudication on the merits.” Petitioner Eric Greene was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment [...]