A key defendant in the Galleon Group insider trading case pleaded guilty Wednesday to three counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud before judge Richard Holwell of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York . Danielle Chiesi was accused of communicating non-public information about IBM Corporation, Advanced Microdevices (AMD) and Sun [...]

UN rights officials on Wednesday expressed “grave concerns” over continued post-election violence in the Ivory Coast , cautioning that genocide could be imminent . During a daily briefing, UN Special Advisor on Genocide Francis Deng and Special Advisor on the Responsibility to Protect Edward Luck discussed their fears for the nation and drew comparisons between [...]

Accused Arizona gunman Jared Lee Loughner was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury in Tuscon, Arizona. He is charged with attempting to assassinate a member of Congress and two counts of attempting to murder a federal employee in connection with the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and two of her aids, Ronald Barber [...]

Four people, including former UN spokesperson Michele Montas, filed criminal complaints on Wednesday against former Haitian president Jean-Claude Duvalier . Montas, who worked for the UN under Ban-Ki Moon, as well as Alix Fils-Aime and Claude and Nicole Magloire, allege that Duvalier committed crimes against humanity . The four were allegedly imprisoned and subjected to [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Tuesday that California state employees can sue for discrimination over the exclusion of their same-sex spouses from long-term health care programs. The Obama administration had been seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed on the basis of the Defense of Marriage Act [...]

Lawyers for Google on Wednesday filed an appeal in Spanish court hoping to overturn orders from Spanish authorities to remove websites that allegedly violate privacy rights. Spain’s Data Protection Agency filed 90 orders for Google to remove the websites from its database. This case is the first of its kind , Google told the Associated [...]

Human rights groups are calling for Lithuania to reopen its investigation into whether the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had a secret prison in the country. Statements from Amnesty International (AI) and Reprieve say that Friday’s decision to stop the investigation was premature. AI says that it has a “dossier of information relevant to the [...]

The Somali Parliament on Tuesday rejected legislation designed to combat piracy . The bill, introduced last week by government officials, seeks to criminalize piracy and improve internal mechanisms for trying alleged offenders. Lawmakers expressed reservations about the bill, including concerns about its necessity and that the proposed sentencing provisions are inconsistent with Islamic teachings. The [...]

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in Harrington v. Richter that the section of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) limiting federal review of state court decisions to decisions resulting from an unreasonable application of the law or an unreasonable determination of the facts is applicable to state court orders issued without [...]

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday announced a one-month postponement in the seating of the country’s new parliament, following a request by a high court judicial tribunal asking for more time to look into allegations of fraud surrounding last September’s parliamentary elections . Karzai issued a decree in December authorizing the country’s Supreme Court to [...]