The Belgian Data Privacy Commission released an advisory report Thursday concluding that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) , the Belgium-based international banking cooperative, has been supplying the US Department of Treasury with "massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian [...]

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has denied a BBC report that human organs were being routinely taken from executed prisoners and sold to foreigners, saying that the donors must first give written consent to the sale of their organs before any such transaction takes place. Gang said the use of prisoners' organs is "very cautious" [...]

Hewlett-Packard announced the immediate resignation of its general counsel Thursday prior to a hearing held by a US House Energy and Commerce Committee panel to question key company officials on their knowledge of a telephone spying scandal. Ann Baskins was still scheduled to testify before the committee Thursday but her lawyers said she would invoke [...]

US District Judge Susan Dlott ruled Wednesday that an Ohio law prohibiting use of the abortion-inducing pill RU-486 is unconstitutional. The law was modeled after a regulation issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) six years ago that warned against administering the drug after the seventh week of a woman's pregnancy. Planned Parenthood and [...]

US District Judge Edward Lodge of the District of Idaho on Wednesday ruled that former US Attorney General John Ashcroft does not have absolute immunity from a lawsuit alleging that the government wrongfully arrested plaintiff Abdullah al Kidd as a material witness in a failed computer terrorism case against a classmate of Kidd. Lodge also [...]

French judge Jean-Claude Kross Wednesday postponed a verdict in the trial of six former Guantanamo Bay detainees accused of attending combat training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan , saying the court needs more information on French intelligence missions to Guantanamo. Defense lawyers for the six men, all French nationals, accuse the French government [...]

US State Department officials testified Wednesday that the number of refugees admitted to the US has fallen by 23 percent as a result of provisions in the USA Patriot Act and the Real ID Act that deny entry to any person that has provided material support for armed rebel groups, including those that have aided [...]

A writer of the draft constitution for Thailand confirmed Thursday that the country's military rulers, who seized control in a bloodless coup on September 19, will have a continued role in the otherwise-civilian government after a new prime minister is appointed. Meechai Ruchupan, a former Senate speaker and the military's current chief lawyer who helped [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law says that the experience of hurricanes Katrina and Rita highlights the need for a new national corps of trained citizen responders under the direction of an independent and revitalized – and perhaps even renamed – FEMA… As Americans we are always siding with the [...]

A federal judge Wednesday set a 2009 trial date for the lawsuit by computer chip-maker Advanced Micro Designs (AMD) against arch-rival Intel after ruling Tuesday that AMD cannot proceed in US courts with a major portion of its case alleging Intel committed anticompetitive practices outside the United States. US District Judge Joseph Farnan said AMD [...]