A British judge said Monday that he dropped prisoner abuse charges against the most senior British military officer charged with abusing detainees last week because his superiors approved some of the techniques. A British Army major testified in November 2006 that a military legal adviser approved techniques for preparing Iraqi detainees for interrogation that allegedly [...]

A US federal judge has approved a settlement under which Arthur Andersen will pay $72.5 million to investors who sued the firm for its involvement in the Enron scandal . US District Judge Melinda Harmon signed an order approving the settlement, ending the former accounting giant's involvement in a $40 billion class action lawsuit . [...]

The Tokyo High Court Tuesday ruled against a group of Chinese plaintiffs seeking $682,000 in damages for injuries caused by chemical weapons leaks left by the Imperial Japanese Army at the end of World War II. The court upheld a 2003 ruling by a Tokyo district court refusing to award damages, but a lawyer for [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Moeen Cheema, professor of Law & Policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan, says that the suspension of Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry by President Pervez Musharraf shows that the country's military leadership has finally overreached itself by assailing the country's last independent public institution, the judiciary… [...]

Former White House counsel Harriet Miers suggested to an aide of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that all 93 US Attorneys be fired at the beginning of President Bush's second term, but that suggestion was ultimately dismissed as impractical, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday. Following Gonzales' approval of a plan to fire a [...]

Foreign "guest workers" in the US are being continually and severely abused, according to a report pointedly entitled "Close to Slavery" issued Monday by the Southern Poverty Law Center . The report says that workers are frequently cheated out of wages, and must pay high fees to obtain the offered jobs. Workers have travel documents [...]

The Idaho State Senate passed a bill in a 29-6 vote Monday that would block illegal immigrants from using most taxpayer-financed public assistance programs. S-1157 would require that applicants eighteen years of age or older to show proof that they are lawfully present in the United States before receiving certain public benefits. Sen. Chuck Coiner, [...]

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed fraud charges Monday against former executives of Canadian telecommunications manufacturer Nortel Networks , accusing the corporation of misleading investors. The complaint , brought in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York , accuses Frank A. Dunn, Douglas C. Beatty, Michael J. Gollogly and [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pressed member nations to work with the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Monday, telling UNHRC members at the opening of the council's first 2007 session that it is crucial that they in turn work with all nations in cooperation toward ending human rights abuses. In an address to the UNHRC [...]

A New Jersey jury awarded a plaintiff $20 million in the latest Vioxx litigation on Monday. The jury found that the drug, distributed by Merck , caused the plaintiff's heart attack and that had the plaintiff's doctor known of the risks associated with Vioxx he would not have prescribed it to the plaintiff. During the [...]