The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Ljubisa Petkovic guilty of contempt on Thursday for refusing to testify against Serbian war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj . Petkovic had been a member of the Serbian Radical Party , of which Seseli had been the president, and refused to testify as a witness for [...]

EU Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Jacques Barrot on Thursday said Google is taking a "step in the right direction" by keeping data on search engine users for nine months rather than 18. Google announced the change this week "to address regulatory concerns" and protect users' privacy . Barrot suggested that Google further reduce the [...]

A trial judge in Key West has found Florida's law preventing gay and lesbian people from adopting children to be unconstitutional and has issued an order permitting a foster parent to adopt a 13-year-old boy. Judge David J. Audlin Jr. of the Monroe County Circuit Court ruled that the 1977 statute violates both the US [...]

Iowa's Attorney General's Office announced on Tuesday that it has filed a complaint against meatpacking company Agriprocessors Inc. and its top officials for 9,311 child labor law violations. The alleged violations stem from the company's employment of 32 minors, 25 under the age of 18 and 7 under the age of 16, in conditions prohibited [...]

Retail chain Walgreens filed a lawsuit Monday in California Superior Court seeking an injunction and the repeal of an ordinance that prohibits the sale of tobacco at pharmacies in San Francisco . Walgreens argues that the ban is unconstitutional because it does not apply to grocery stores and large retailers such as Wal-Mart , which [...]

Human Rights in China (HRIC) issued a release on Wednesday saying that Chinese police and other officials still employ torture to elicit confessions and intimidate political dissidents despite domestic and international bans. The group said even though various government agencies have issued regulations against the use of torture, they aren't appropriately enforced. It also detailed [...]

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott announced Tuesday that the state has reached a settlement in a Medicare fraud lawsuit it had brought against drug manufacturer Abbott Laboratories . In the suit , Texas had alleged that Abbott Laboratories and other drug manufacturers had inflated drug prices that they reported to the state above what they [...]

The UK Crown Prosecution Service announced Wednesday that seven Muslim extremists accused of conspiring to bomb trans-Atlantic flights will be retried because a jury failed to reach verdicts earlier this week. In a prepared statement, Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald said: I have today concluded that the prosecution should apply to retry each of [...]

Serge Brammertz , the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , told reporters in Serbia Wednesday that he was "cautiously optimistic" that two major remaining war crimes fugitives would be caught. Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic , both Serbian leaders during the Yugoslavian [...]

A Malaysian court on Wednesday set a September 24 hearing date for arguments over approval of an application to transfer of sodomy charges against Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim to a Malaysian High Court. After the hearing, Anwar characterized the move by Malaysian prosecutors to transfer the proceedings as a "trial by ambush" , while [...]