In Thursday's environmental law brief, a Jakarta Indonesia court has ruled that the travel ban on the six Newmont Mining Co. executives that has been in place since last October is illegal. Despite the ruling, the executives are still being detained in the country as objects of an ongoing criminal case into alleged pollution of [...]

Chile's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet cannot be prosecuted over the killing of his predecessor as Chile's army chief, General Carlos Prats . The ruling reverses a lower court ruling that had stripped Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution in the 1974 car bombing assassination of Prats. The Supreme Court reversed the [...]

ABC WFTS-TV in Tampa is reporting that the Florida Department of Children and Families may have lost an opportunity – perhaps its only opportunity – to take Terri Schiavo into protective custody and restore her feeding tube contrary to a court order. Early Thursday morning around 8 AM the Department appealed Judge George Greer's injunction [...]

The Austrian Justice Ministry has dropped its case against a former Nazi psychiatrist accused of killing children at a Vienna clinic after he was ruled unfit for trial. The government said Wednesday that Heinrich Gross, 89, suffers from dementia and could not stand trial. Gross worked at a children's clinic in Austria where 789 children [...]

Leading Thursday's corporations and securities law news, Adelphia Communications Corp. is reportedly close to settling claims made by the US Department of Justice and the SEC related to the massive accounting and management scandal at the company. Adelphia will pay about $725 million making it one of the largest penalties paid in recent years. The [...]

A French appeals court on Thursday affirmed a 2002 conviction of investor George Soros for insider trading, including a $2.9 million penalty. The court ruled that Soros' 1988 purchase of French bank Societe Generale SA stock with knowledge that the bank might be the object of a takeover bid broke insider trading laws. Soros has [...]

A United Nations report on peacekeeper sex abuse released Thursday has described its military arm as deeply flawed. The report, authored by Prince Zeid al Hussein, Jordan's UN ambassador, was issued as a response to repeated allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers in missions ranging from Bosnia and Kosovo to West Africa and Congo. [...]

Canadian citizens may be subjected to expanded "control measures" such as house arrests currently being developed for use against immigrant terror suspects, Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has said. The proposed detention rules are meant to expand authorities' options in dealing with immigrants arrested on suspicion of terrorism other than jailing them. However, Cotler said [...]

Itar-Tass is reporting that the Kyrgyz Supreme Court has invalidated disputed parliamentary elections. Kyrgyzstan President Askar Akayev had been flown to Russia and his family had been taken to Kazakhstan just hours after protestors, demanding Akayev's resignation after allegations of fraud, stormed the presidential compound. Court chairman Kurmanbek Osmonov is quoted as saying that the [...]

AP is reporting that the US Supreme Court has just refused to issue an emergency stay in the Schiavo case, and will not order re-insertion of her feeding tube. From DC, SCOTUSblog reports that the order reads: "The application for a stay of enforcement of judgment pending the filing and disposition of a petition for [...]