UN Special Rapporteur for North Korea Vitit Muntarbhorn on Thursday criticized the country's "abysmal" and ongoing human rights violations in an independent report submitted to the UN General Assembly. Muntarbhorn said that the authoritarian government was responsible for various abuses, including torture, public executions, extensive surveillance, media censorship, women's rights violations, and widespread hunger. The [...]

The French Constitutional Council on Thursday approved a controversial Internet piracy law that would restrict access to individuals who use the Internet to violate intellectual property laws. The bill was approved by the French Parliament in September. Under the so-called "three strikes" law, the French government could send notices to Internet service providers to terminate [...]

The US Treasury Department on Thursday released a series of rulings that would restrict executive compensation at institutions that received special assistance from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) . Among the changes are a cash cap on compensation of $500,000 per year for most relevant employees, immediate vesting of stock options for those paid [...]

The US Senate on Thursday voted 68-29 to approve a bill that extends the definition of federal hate crimes to include crimes motivated by gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is part of a $681 billion military appropriations conference report for fiscal year [...]

Sri Lanka must investigate reports of human rights violations and war crimes during the last months of the internal armed civil conflict by both government and rebel forces and prosecute those responsible, the US Department of State (DOS) urged Thursday. The statement from DOS spokesperson Ian Kelly came the same day the DOS released a [...]

West Bank road segregation judgment, Israel Supreme Court, October 22, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here. JURIST has more on the ongoing conflicts between Israel and Palestine.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted Thursday to approve the formation of rules mandating so-called "net neutrality" , promising openness commensurate with the ideals of the Internet itself. The idea of net neutrality, supported unanimously by the FCC commissioners, is to allow an open flow of information over the Internet, regardless of the amount of [...]

Tom Carpenter, Pitt Law '11, spent his summer as a Legal Extern at the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Palau… The most recent general election in the Republic of Palau, held on November 4, 2008, was a historic event for the small island nation. In addition to electing a new President, [...]

Finnish telecommunications company Nokia filed suit Thursday against Apple in the US District Court for the District of Delaware , alleging that Apple infringed 10 of its patents on its iPhone. The patents cover wireless data transmission, speech coding, and security/encryption, specifically GSM, UTMS (3G), and WLAN standards. Nokia alleges that Apple has infringed its [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday unanimously struck down a Quebec law restricting certain students' access to English-language schools as unconstitutional. The court's decision overturns Bill 104 , enacted by the Quebec government in 2002, rejecting two appeals by the Quebec government to protect the legislation. The controversial law was adopted to promote the [...]