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French court rules genocide law unconstitutional
Industry News |
2012/02/05 01:13
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France's Constitutional Council ruled Tuesday that a French law concerning the mass killings of Armenians a century ago violates the country's constitution. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had personally backed the law, immediately said he would ask the government to prepare a new bill taking into account the council's ruling. The law passed by France's parliament in December makes it a crime to deny that the killings of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 constituted genocide. The council ruled the law would violate freedom of expression and speech, which are guaranteed by the French constitution. Turkey, which says there was no systematic campaign against Armenians, has strongly opposed the French law. The head of a French Armenian organization, meanwhile, sharply criticized the ruling, saying it was the result of Turkish lobbying. Relations between France and Turkey have suffered since the law's passage, with Turkey suspending its military and economic cooperation with France after the lower house approval of the measure in December. The French Senate gave the law the green light in late January.
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Del. court says ex-HP CEO can't keep letter secret
Industry News |
2011/12/30 13:19
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Former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO Mark Hurd will have to make public a letter detailing sexual-harassment allegations that led to his ouster.
The Delaware Supreme Court, the state's highest, ruled on Wednesday that Hurd's lawyers didn't show that disclosing the letter would invade California privacy rights. The ruling said information that is only mildly embarrassing is not protected from public disclosure. The letter, it added, does not contain trade secrets or non-public financial information that would qualify.
Although the letter goes into embarrassing detail about Hurd's behavior, it does not describe any intimate conversation or conduct, the ruling said. Some sentences, concerning Hurd's family, were ordered redacted, but no one appealed that part of a lower court's decision, according to the ruling.
Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred sent the letter last year on behalf of Jodie Fisher, who was hired to help with HP networking events and later accused Hurd of sexual harassment. Although an investigation did not find any sexual harassment, it uncovered inaccurate expense reports that ultimately pressured Hurd to resign. Hurd now works as co-president at rival Oracle Corp. |
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Lawyer: Moms stole from Hawaii toy store for kids
Industry News |
2011/12/29 09:49
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Single mothers filled with regret were making arrangements to turn themselves after they were seen on surveillance footage taking toys from a Hawaii store before Christmas, according to a lawyer who referred to the theft as a desperate act.
Surveillance video from Dec. 1 and released by police last week showed five women and a man helping themselves to items in a Toys R Us display at Windward Mall in Kaneohe. Police said the group had hauled away about $1,000 worth of merchandise.
Attorney Myles Breiner said some of the women contacted him Friday, and he said the women knew what they did was wrong. He said he contacted police over the weekend and stored the items in his office.
Police on Tuesday took the items, which were brought gift-wrapped to Breiner's office, and returned them to the store manager, the lawyer said. Meanwhile, at least three women made arrangements to surrender to police Tuesday, and the others, including the man who has since contacted Breiner, were expected to surrender by the end of the week. |
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Appeals court upholds convictions in Fort Dix plot
Industry News |
2011/12/28 10:35
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A federal appeals panel on Wednesday upheld the convictions and sentences of five Muslim men accused of planning to attack Fort Dix or other military bases, though it threw out a charge against one defendant.
The main issue was prosecutors' use of wiretaps obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a part of the Patriot Act aimed largely at gathering foreign intelligence.
The recordings were a major piece of a 2½-month trial for the five men, all Muslim immigrants who grew up in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia.
The men — Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka — were arrested in May 2007. In 2008, a federal jury in Camden, N.J., convicted them of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel at Fort Dix. All but Tatar are serving life terms.
Defense lawyers said it was unconstitutional to use the recordings in a domestic criminal case and that it may have been impossible to convict the men without the evidence.
But in a unanimous ruling written by Judge Marjorie O. Rendell, a three-judge panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. The challenged search was conducted in objectively reasonable reliance on a duly authorized statute, and therefore admissible at trial, Rendell wrote. |
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