Sunday, Sep 29th
Last update06:31:21 AM GMT
Domestic Glance
The Nevada Supreme Court refused to overturn former football star O.J. Simpson's armed robbery and kidnapping convictions stemming from a Las Vegas hotel room heist at gunpoint.
The court said in its ruling that it concluded that all of Simpson's arguments for appeal were without merit. But the court ordered the conviction of Simpson's co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart to be reversed and a new trial held.
Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against Blackwater Worldwide personnel accused of murder and other violent crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cases are beginning to fall apart, burdened by a legal obstacle of the government’s own making.
In the most recent and closely watched case, the Justice Department on Monday said that it would not seek murder charges against Andrew J. Moonen, a Blackwater armorer accused of killing a guard assigned to the Iraqi vice president on Dec. 24, 2006.
The federal agency responsible for protecting more than 9,000 federal facilities is reminding its security guards that the general public has the right to take photographs and shoot video outside the courthouses, office buildings and campuses they protect.
The reminder is part of a federal court settlement between the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service and the New York Civil Liberties Union. The group represented Antonio Musumeci, 29, of Edgewater, N.J., who sued after being arrested in November for videotaping a demonstrator outside a federal courthouse in Manhattan.
Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umana has an unfortunate claim on history. He is the first member of the MS-13, or Mara Salvatrucha, gang to be sentenced to death under the federal system of capital punishment, according to the Justice Department.
Prosecutors and FBI officials say the Umana investigation, which took them from North Carolina to California to El Salvador, is a model for how federal authorities will attack a growing gang threat that is leaching into smaller cities across America's heartland.
The US peace group "Peace of the Action" has discovered documents showing that it and many other organisations have been under surveillance for many months by a private agency called the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR).
Founded by antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, Peace of the Action has focused on opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by pressuring legislators and organising demonstrations and civil disobedience actions at visible places around Washington DC.
The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with 2.3 million Americans behind bars, a 300 percent increase since 1980, the report states. This country has more inmates than the top 35 European countries combined.
While the costs of housing prisoners -- $50 billion annually for state correctional costs alone -- should be enough to cause us to rethink our way of doing things, the overall societal and human costs should be even more convincing.
Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, extended a freeze on foreclosures to all 50 states as concern spread among federal and local officials that homes are being seized based on false data.
“We will stop foreclosure sales until our assessment has been satisfactorily completed,” the Charlotte, North Carolina- based company said today in a statement. “Our ongoing assessment shows the basis for foreclosure decisions is accurate.”
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