Leading Wednesday's corporations and securities law news, Bristol-Myers Squib has reached a $300 million settlement with the federal government over securities fraud. US Attorney for the district of New Jersey Christopher Christie announced the settlement today, and also announced that two former employees, former Chief Financial Officer Frederick Schiff and the former head of Bristol-Myers [...]

Despite the looming threat of a Presidential veto , the US House of Representatives voted 238-187 late Wednesday to approve the so-called Sanders Freedom to Read Amendment limiting a section of the USA Patriot Act giving the FBI and Justice Department power to search public library records and book store sales without a search warrant. [...]

Leading Wednesday's states brief, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled today that the town of Greenwich must release its computer database of aerial photographs and maps to the public. The Supreme Court rejected the town's argument that the records were exempt from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act because the release of detailed information [...]

The Mexican Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that former president Luis Echeverria can be prosecuted for the deaths of student demonstrators killed in 1971. A panel of judges voted 3-2 to allow Echeverria and his former interior minister to face prosecution after noting that the 30-year statute of limitations began to run in 1976 when Echeverria's [...]

Senior US military and Justice Department officials defended Guantanamo prison and US policy towards terror detainees Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Citing continued uncertainty about their status, Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) urged Congress to define the legal rights of the detainees, complaining that legislation he introduced in 2002 on the matter went [...]

Terri Schiavo autopsy report, Florida District Six Medical Examiner, June 15, 2005 . Read the full text of the report here. Reported in JURIST Paper Chasehere.

Hearing on Detainees, US Senate Judiciary Committee, June 15, 2005 . Excerpt from the testimony of Professor Stephen Schulhofer, New York University School of Law: For half a century, the United States has exported democracy and human rights to the whole world, but Guantánamo has tarnished America's name and poisoned our reputation. We don't yet [...]

An autopsy report released Wednesday showed that Terri Schiavo had a severely "atrophied" brain that weighed less than half of what a normal brain should weigh and was irreversibly damaged. Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin said that the findings were "consistent" with a person in a persistent vegetative state. The autopsy also found no evidence [...]

The Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) Wednesday questioned Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan , a half-brother of Saddam Hussein, in connection with crimes committed against the Kurds in the early 1980s. The tribunal questioned Hussein himself earlier in the week . Although under pressure to move forward in the case, no date has been set for a trial [...]

New York-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch reported Wednesday that thousands of people have been arrested and some 36 killed across Ethiopia in skirmishes with police during election-related protests. HRW said that the deaths occured when "security forces responded to incidents of rock-throwing and looting by opening fire indiscriminately on large crowds of people". The [...]