David Shapiro : "In an unfortunate decision, the Ninth Circuit last week reversed its own precedent and rolled back protections against strip searching jail detainees in Bull v. San Francisco . The en banc ruling weighed in on the question – which has divided the circuits – of whether the Fourth Amendment lets jail officials [...]

The Italian audit court, Corte del Conti , announced Wednesday that the number of corruption cases in Italy have risen by 229 percent over the past year. Court president Tullio Lazzaro voiced his concerns over the significant increase in public corruption scandals from 2008 to 2009, saying that legal sanctions are no longer a sufficient [...]

The Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine on Wednesday delayed an official declaration of victory for the recent presidential elections pending a suit filed by election runner-up Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko . Tymoshenko alleges widespread voter fraud allowed Viktor Yanukovych to win the election 49 percent to 45 percent. Tymoshenko filed her suit on Tuesday after [...]

An Internet privacy advocacy group on Wednesday filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that the new Google social networking service Buzz violates privacy laws. The complaint was filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and asks the FTC to investigate possible unfair business practices, privacy violations, and to restore [...]

The UN announced on Tuesday that the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) will enter into force on August 1 after being ratified by 30 countries. Burkina Faso and Moldova both submitted their instruments of ratification Tuesday, becoming the 29th and 30th countries to do so. In a statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that "the [...]

A Finnish government commission established to investigate a 2008 school shooting proposed a ban on semiautomatic handguns in a report released Wednesday. If approved by the Finnish Parliament , the ban would affect more than 200,000 semiautomatic handguns across the country. The commission made other recommendations for stricter gun control laws, including raising the age [...]

A judge from the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama sentenced former HealthSouth executive Ken Livesay to five months in prison on Tuesday for his involvement in the company's accounting fraud. Judge Karon Bowdre sentenced Livesay for the fourth time after the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in November [...]

A Malaysian appeals court on Wednesday denied a request by opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to dismiss the charge of sodomy against him. Anwar was appealing the Malaysian high court's December decision not to dismiss the charge. Anwar is accused of sodomizing his former aide, Mohd Saiful Bukhari, in 2008. He contends the charge is a [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Tuesday that claims of unlawful treatment and wrongful death brought on behalf of two former Guantanamo Bay detainees are barred by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) . The two men, Yasser Al-Zahrani and Salah Ali Abdullah Ahmed Al-Salami, were among [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) issued its annual report on Tuesday confirming the work-related killings of more than 70 journalists worldwide during 2009, the highest in the 30-year history of the CPJ. Of the 71 confirmed killings identified in the report, 51 are believed to be murders, with several others still under investigation. The [...]