The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may not tax monies that Washington, DC plaintiffs receive to compensate for emotional distress injuries, according to a ruling released Wednesday by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit . The plaintiff in the case was fired from her previous job, brought suit against her employer, [...]

Amnesty International on Wednesday accused Israel of deliberately inflicting unnecessary damage on Lebanese civilian infrastructure during the Middle East conflict , acts which Amnesty says rises to the level of war crimes. In its report , Amnesty cited as evidence instances of Israeli airstrip's on remote bridges "of no apparent strategic importance," the destruction of [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has assigned counsel for Vojislav Seselj , ruling that Seselj may not conduct his own defense in his war crimes trial. According to the ICTY press release : In coming to its decision, the Trial Chamber described numerous instances where Vojislav Seselj behaved in an obstructionist, disruptive [...]

Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a 36-year-old Pakistan-born Australian immigrant, on Wednesday was sentenced to 20 years in prison with a minimum of 15 years served for his plan to wage a "holy war" by detonating homemade bombs around Sydney. New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Anthony Whealy said the maximum sentence given to Lodhi should be [...]

Xia Shuqin , a survivor of the 1937-1938 Nanjing Massacre , was awarded $200,000 by a Chinese court Wednesday in a lawsuit against two Japanese historians who claimed she fabricated her recollection of the atrocities. Shuqin claims to have suffered psychological trauma and damage to her reputation after the historians published two books claiming her [...]

A Russian court has affirmed the right of the city of Moscow to reject an application by organizers of a gay pride parade, ruling that there was a legitimate safety concern in banning the parade, though lawyers for the parade organizers said the ban infringes on gay rights. A separate court upheld the ban in [...]

Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht , who was reprimanded by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct in May for his support of former US Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers , defended his actions to an appeals court Tuesday. Hecht was issued an "admonishment" , the least severe sanction allowed, following complaints filed with the [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said that he will divert additional resources to New Orleans to address the city's high crime rates following the Hurricane Katrina disaster . The additional resources include ten temporary prosecutors to handle gun, drug and immigration cases, nine permanent lawyers to assist in fraud and violent crime cases, and [...]

Testimony from Kurdish survivors of the 1987-1988 Anfal campaign in Iraq continued Wednesday during the trial of Saddam Hussein , where Hussein and six co-defendants face genocide and crimes against humanity charges . Following testimony the day before describing chemical attacks , Adiba Oula Bayez, a Kurdish woman, described the August 16, 1987 attack on [...]

A plan by the US Forest Service to allow commercial logging inside Central California's Giant Sequoia National Monument violates environmental laws , US District Judge Charles R. Breyer held Tuesday. Breyer had previously issued an injunction to stop the logging in response to a lawsuit filed by environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and [...]