A Mississippi jury Wednesday held the State Farm insurance company liable for $2.5 million dollars in punitive damages after US District Court Judge L.T. Senter Jr. issued an unexpected directed verdict calling on the company to pay $223,292 for rejecting a claim brought in the wake of Hurricane Katrina . Senter ruled that State Farm [...]

Ali Hassan al-Majid , the cousin of Saddam Hussein also known as "Chemical Ali," became the leading defendant Thursday in the genocide trial currently before the Iraqi High Tribunal . The chief judge presiding over the trial dismissed all charges against Hussein Monday following his December 30 execution . The six remaining defendants are all [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Wednesday claimed the refusal of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to release two Department of Justice memos points to a cover-up of unlawful abuse. The memos, which discuss interrogation methods and a presidential order concerning the CIA's authorization to set up detention facilities outside the United States, were [...]

Former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam was sentenced to life imprisonment Thursday after he was convicted on genocide charges in absentia at the conclusion of a 12-year trial. Mengistu and 72 other former officials were charged with genocide, imprisonment, homicide, and illegal confiscation of property for crimes committed during the "Red Terror" , where thousands [...]

The Communist Party of China (CPC) promised Wednesday to confront gambling, corruption, embezzlement, and fraud within the government, following a speech Tuesday by Chinese President Hu Jintao where the president hailed reforms accomplished in 2006 and vowed to build a cleaner Communist party in China. Hu's speech focused on four measures: improving ethics education, reform [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law says the January opening of the 110th Congress offers an opportunity for a fresh and perhaps more bipartisan start to a stalled federal judicial confirmation process… When the 110th Congress convened, Congress was searching for ways to distinguish itself from the 109th, [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist William Teesdale, an attorney in the Federal Public Defenders Office in Portland, Oregon representing Guantanamo detainee Adel Hamad, a Sudanese national transferred to Guantanamo in early 2003 from Pakistan, says that on the fifth anniversary of the US terror detention camp we should remember that the detainees held there are individual [...]

The trial of six men charged with attempting to bomb a London subway and bus on July 21, 2005 began Thursday, with the jury being sworn in to try the six men on charges including conspiracy to murder, possession of explosives, attempted murder, and conspiracy to cause explosions. No one was injured during the July [...]

Cisco filed a lawsuit against Apple, Inc. on Wednesday in federal court, requesting injunctive relief from Apple's use of the name "iPhone," to which Cisco has held the trademark since 2000. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled Apple's iPhone at a San Francisco tradeshow on Tuesday, despite not having agreed to the terms proposed by Cisco [...]

Lawmakers in the Italian Senate have started weighing proposals for legislation that would legalize civil unions in the country. The process in the Senate's Justice Committee comes a month after Senate leaders requested that a bill be drafted by January 31 that would give legal status to unions of all unmarried couples, both heterosexual and [...]