A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia granted summary judgment for the National Forest Service (NFS) Wednesday, upholding an agreement limiting the amount of timber that can be harvested in Alaska's Tongass National Forest . Several Alaska towns and companies challenged the 2008 Tongass National Forest Land and Resource Management [...]

Eighty-five victims of rocket attacks in Israel have filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia seeking damages from Iran and Iran's central bank for for injuries suffered in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The suit, filed Monday, claims that Iran, between 2001 and 2006, gave Hezbollah more than $50 [...]

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 [...]