The US Supreme Court on Tuesday denied without comment a petition for certiorari filed in University of California Regents v. Merrill Lynch (06-1341) , a derivative lawsuit filed in October 2001 by Enron shareholders against their investment banks accusing them of partnering to conceal monetary losses incurred by the company. The shareholders brought the suit [...]

Jose Padilla was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison Tuesday in connection with his conviction on terrorism-related charges. US District Judge Marcia Cooke handed down the sentence following two weeks of sentencing hearings, during which the government sought life sentences for Padilla and his two co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifadh Wael [...]

Kenya's main opposition party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) , has filed a formal complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) , alleging that the Kenyan government has committed crimes against humanity in using force against demonstrators protesting the recent disputed re-election , an ODM spokesperson said Tuesday. The violence began after the re-election of [...]

Wendy E. Parmet : "The spread of H5N1, a new, deadly strain of avian influenza, has raised fears of a potential human pandemic. While the virus is not now easily transmissible to humans, scientists fear it may mutate to become more highly contagious, thereby triggering a pandemic. In the last several years, the federal government [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a prison inmate cannot bring a lawsuit against federal prison guards over the handling of the inmate's possessions under the Federal Tort Claims Act . In Ali v. Federal Bureau of Prisons , Abdus-Shahid Ali sued prison officials working for both the District of Columbia Department of Corrections [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Tuesday ruled that France violated the rights of a lesbian woman by refusing her application to adopt a child because of her sexual preference. The French officials rejected the woman's application on the grounds that she and her partner were not able to present a male "referent," even [...]

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA) on Monday released internal Canadian government documents detailing evidence of continued mistreatment and abuse of detainees transferred by Canadian forces to Afghan authorities. The documents, originally distributed to senior officials of the Canadian government and officers of the Canadian military, detail an investigation conducted by Canadian officials last [...]

Zimbabwean police banned an opposition party political march on Tuesday, setting the stage for a legal battle involving recent amendments to Zimbabwe's restrictive Public Order and Security Act , which allows police to deny any party's application for a public gathering. Under the old version of the law, the Minister of Home Affairs, which is [...]

The Russian Prosecutor General's office said Tuesday it has launched a forgery investigation targeting former Russian prime minister and now opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov . According to Russian news agencies, the investigation relates to allegations that signatures were forged on petitions nominating Kasyanov for the upcoming March 2 Russian presidential elections. A spokesperson for Kasyanov's [...]

The government of Pakistan, which has kept Pakistani Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and several other judges and lawyers under preventative detention since President Musharraf declared emergency rule on November 3, may be attempting to avoid constitutional restraints on the duration of those detentions, according to a Tuesday report by Pakistan's The News [...]