In Friday's human rights news, Amnesty International has appealed to all governments to protect against female genital mutilation (FGM) in light of the first International Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) day. Last year, the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (IAC) adopted a Declaration of Zero Tolerance to FGM as well as a Common Agenda to help eliminate FGM in the African continent. See Amnesty for more.... The Law Society of Kenya has criticized the Kenyan government for committing serious human rights violations against people from the Coast in the pretext of fighting terror. The society also accused the State of targeting Coastal people and Muslims in terror attacks last year in its 2003 Human Rights Report. See the East African Standard for the full story.... In India, the Calcutta High Court banned caning and beating of students within state schools holding that the practice is contrary to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. See the Times of India for more.

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In Friday's federal courts roundup, Judge Lynn N. Hughes (US District Court, Southern District of Texas) dismissed an indictment against a convicted former CIA operative after prosecutors decided not to seek a retrial in the case. Edwin Wilson, 75, was convicted in 1983 of selling arms to Libya. The conviction was overturned last year because the government utilized information that it knew was false while prosecuting Wilson. Wilson remains in jail on other related convictions, although his attorney plans to investigate to determine if those convictions were faulty as well.... Judge Christopher Conner (US District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania) issued a permanent injunction barring Thurston Bell from giving instructions on how people can avoid paying income taxes. Bell is an opponent of the federal income tax, and argued unsucessfully that there was a factual dispute in the case regarding his Fifth and First Amendment rights. The York Daily Record has the full story.... As reported earlier on JURIST's Paper Chase, the US NInth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government cannot ban the sale of foods made with hemp, a plant related to marijuana. AP reports that the court acknowledged the Drug Enforcement Agency's regulatory authority over marijuana, but did not follow the law in asserting authority over hemp food products. Read the opinion here [PDF].

In international law news Friday, the Swedish government has announced that it will sue the European Commission over a Commission decision to allow the use of the herbicide Paraquat in the EU. Sweden, along with six other member states, currently bans the use of Paraquat saying it is highly toxic and extremely hazardous to health. The Pesticide Action Network International has published this position paper [PDF] on Paraquat. Read the Swedish Ministry of Environment press release and the full story from EUObserver.com.... The UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) has released a report that describes the history of landownership in the Russian Federation and outlines the current legal and institutional framework for land administration. The ECE report says that the necessary elements for an effective land policy are in place, but several practical problems remain including competing agencies involved in land administration, and the mixture of public law and private-law functions within one State authority. Read the full story from the UN News Service and an ECE press release.... The International Court of Justice has denied that Judge Nabil Elaraby gave an interview appearing in the Egyptian magazine al-Ahram al-Arabli, which indicated a bias against Israel. Both the ICJ and the magazine are investigating the matter. AP has the full story. Based on the magazine article, Israel had unsuccessfully tried to have the Egyptian judge removed from the proceedings on the legality of Israel's security fence. For more on Israel's efforts to have Elaraby dismissed from the case, see this earlier report on JURIST's Paper Chase.... The Ad Hoc Committee on the Elaboration of the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime has finalized the rules of procedure for this summer's Conference of Parties to the Convention. The conference will provide a forum for state parties to promote the pact, which tackles illegal cross-border activities. The UN News Service has more.

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In Friday's Congressional news, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a medical doctor by profession, today renewed calls for medical malpractice reform, an issue he has long championed. According to Reuters, Frist, who advocates comprehensive reform measures, including caps on jury awards, plans to restrict his immediate plans to obstetrics or trauma centers in an effort to win approval. The House passed malpractice reform legislation last year (HR 5 [PDF]), but the Senate measure (S 11 [PDF]) was successfully filibustered.

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Here's Friday's legal news from the Department of Justice. The Department has issued a statement on California's decision to drop charges against former Inglewood police officer Jeremy Morse who was prosecuted twice for improper police conduct in connection with the video-taped arrest of Donovan Jackson in 2002. After facing two hung juries, state prosecutors decided Friday not to prosecute a third time. The DOJ statement reads:

Since this incident occurred, the Justice Department has been following the progress of the state investigation and prosecution of this case. In light of today's announcement by the District Attorney, prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, working in close coordination with prosecutors in the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, will review all the evidence in this case - including the transcripts of the two state trial proceedings - to determine if any federal action may be warranted. This review, which may include additional investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will be careful, fair and thorough.

CNN.com carries a related story with background information on the case.

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In Friday's civil rights news, the PR Newswire reports that the Iranian American Bar Association (IABA) released a report [PDF] today that details the "arbitrary detention and mistreatment of a large number of Iranian nationals" under the INS's new registration system, called the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS). This is the first time NSEERS has been studied, and the study revealed discriminatory treatment of Iranians who currently live in the US. The IABA is a not-for-profit group dedicated protecting and furthering the interest of the Iranians living in America, especially those who are attorneys.... KFOR in Oklahoma City, OK reports that the Department of Libraries for the State of Oklahoma has been the recipient of numerous employment discrimination complaints. Twelve complaints have been filed by employees against other employees in the department since October of 2000. According to an attorney for one of the complainants, the sheer number of the complaints is staggering since there are only six employees in the entire department.

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Reuters: "Georgia's parliament on Friday unanimously approved constitutional changes strengthening the powers of the president and restructuring government along west European lines, complete with a cabinet and prime minister."

The move will provide greater executive power to newly elected President Mikhail Saakashvili, a Columbia University educated lawyer who hopes to reverse the desperate financial crisis in the former Soviet republic. An English translation of the country's previous constitution can be found here.

In Friday's law school news, Professor Derrick Bell of the New York University School of Law gave the keynote speech at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law's Brown v. Board of Education 50th Anniversary Symposium [PDF], and JURIST's Paper Chase was on hand. Bell's speech, entitled "Silent Covenant: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform," echoed key points made by symposium panelists earlier in the day: namely, that the decision in Brown was the product of temporary black-white interest convergence, and that it has been rendered almost "legally irrelevant" in the face of persistent de facto segregation and judicial retrenchment. Indeed, the current era has been "marked by full retreat from desegregation," according to Professor Janet Schofield, and "gradual if covert resegregation," according to Professor Joe Feagin (emphasis added). Also speaking this morning were Professors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Derrick A. Bell Professor and Scholar respectively at Pitt Law.
The symposium concludes with a late afternoon reception, and Pitt promises to feature video on its website shortly.

In other law school news, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy dedicated the Koret Law Center at the University of San Francisco School of Law on Thursday. The buildings it comprises were renamed and renovated at a cost of $12 million. Meanwhile, on the other coast, Governor John Rowland has dedicated $10 million in his proposed budget to correcting design problems with the law library facade at the University of Connecticut School of Law. AP reports that the state will likely pursue legal action against one of the parties to the construction.

Lastly, of general interest, a Colorado federal judge has ordered the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) to grant extra test time on the LSAT to a learning disabled senior at Syracuse University. Without the additional time, the judge ruled, the student's score "wouldn't reflect [her] true intellectual abilities and achievements." Rocky Mountain News offers the full story here.

AP: "A judge on Friday threw out most of the wrongful death lawsuit filed against Baylor University by the father of a basketball player who was gunned down last summer."

A Texas district court judge dismissed six of seven counts in a suit by the father of slain college basketball player Patrick Dennehy Jr., allegedly at the hands of a teammate. The judge found that the defendants, which included Baylor University, President Robert Sloan, former athletic director Tom Stanton and former basketball coach Dave Bliss, could not have reasonably foreseen Dennehy's death. The remaining count, which will go forward, alleges that the defendants "intentionally, knowingly or recklessly" caused the death.

AP: "President Bush named seven people Friday to sit on an independent study commission to look into intelligence failures on Iraqi weapons, choosing former Democratic Sen. Charles S. Robb and retired judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican, to head the panel."

The President's remarks can be found here. The New York Times has more.

AP: "Rejecting one front of the government's drug war, a federal appeals court ruled Friday the United States cannot ban the sale of food made with natural hemp that contains only trace amounts of the psychoactive chemical in marijuana."

In a unanimous opinion, the Ninth Circuit distinguished between non-psychoactive hemp which, according to the three-judge panel, cannot be banned by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, from synthetic THC or naturally-occurring THC contained in or derived from marijuana, which the agency legally can prohibit. The opinion can be found here [PDF].

In Friday's criminal law and punishment news, the Nevada Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of death-row inmate William Castillo, according to AP. The state's high court termed part of Castillo's argument "nonsense."... California's The Mercury News reports that the California Supreme Court has decided not to hear another appeal from death-row inmate Kevin Cooper. Cooper had wanted the court to postpone his upcoming execution while further DNA tests were conducted.... AP reports that a Maryland judge has set aside the death sentence of a man who had been convicted of killing a bank executive in 1986. The judge did so because he believed the jury may have voted for life imprisonment had it be told of the defendant's troubled upbringing.... A North Carolina judge today freed Darryl Hunt, a NC murder convict, because DNA tests showed that he was not the real killer. Hunt had served 18 years in jail for the crime.

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In Friday's media and information law news, Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper has closed after the nation's Supreme Court ruled that it was a crime to publish without a government license. The Daily News had recently resumed publishing after previous legal battles, but the owners said the paper would apply for a license from the government before it began publishing again. The paper was already denied a license in December. AP has more.... The US Department of Justice refused a Freedom of Information request for access to information concerning congressional redistricting in Texas, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The department declared the information to be "predecisional deliberative material," which is exempted from the FOIA. RCFP has more.... The district court judge in the trial of Terry Nichols for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings ruled that cameras will not be allowed in the courtroom, RCFP reports. Nichols requested the media ban for the state trial.... Thousands of BBC staff protested throughout the UK Thursday, rallying against government interference with the corporation, the Guardian reports. The protests came in the wake of the Hutton Report, which placed blame on the BBC for the apparent suicide of a weapons expert and threw the corporation's independence from the government into question.

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AP: "The Justice Department has opened a civil antitrust investigation of Western Union Financial Services, the money-transfer subsidiary of First Data Corp."

AP: "A six-month-old amnesty offer by Turkey's government aimed at convincing Kurdish rebels to lay down their weapons in exchange for less severe prison terms expired Friday, with only 140 guerrillas surrendering out of some 4,500."

Reuters: "The Pentagon said on Friday it had named military lawyers to defend two more of the foreign terrorism suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one Yemeni and one Sudanese, in key step toward starting trials before military tribunals."

The US Department of Defense's press release can be found here.

In Friday's corporations and securities law news, the NYSE announced it will not sue its former CEO and chairman, Richard Grasso, over what regulators believe to be an excessive pay package, but is cutting the salaries of its top officials. The Chicago Sun Times has more.... A federal bankruptcy judge in New York approved a plan in which Enron Corp. will sell Portland General Electric to an investment group headed by former Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt. Now federal and state regulators have to approve the deal which could take up to a year. Read the Enron press release here. AP has more.... The SEC has made an informal request of farm equipment maker AGCO Corp. for information on the company's accounting of manufacturing, invoicing, and revenue booked on equipment that remained on AGCO property for a time. AP has more.... The SEC is considering civil charges against Zomax Inc., a compact disc maker, and some of its current and former officers on "allegations of insider trading and making false and misleading statements." AP has more.... GlaxoSmithKline Plc announced it would book $403 million legal charge in its fourth-quarter results for 2003 after reaching a settlement in a US antitrust case over its arthritis drug Relafen. Reuters has more.... The New York state supreme court judge hearing the trial of two former Tyco executives accused of stealing $600 million from the company will let the jury consider most of the counts against them. AP has more.

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In cyberspace law news Friday, the Department of Defense today shut down its online voting experiment for overseas military and civilian citizens. An internal DoD memo earlier this week described the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) as unable to insure legitimacy of votes....SCO Group has significantly widened its Unix and Linux lawsuit against IBM, adding a copyright infringement claim to the already complicated case. SCO has been involved with claims that IBM and others misappropriated trade secrets by moving technology developed for proprietary Unix to open-source Linux...A music industry group on Friday raided the Australian offices of peer-to-peer companies Sharman Networks and Brilliant Digital Entertainment, along with the homes of key executives and several Internet service providers. Sharman Networks runs the popular KaZaa filesharing network. Music Industry Piracy Investigations obtained a court order Thursday, and began raiding premises in Australia on Friday searching for documents and electronic evidence to support its case against the peer-to-peer companies. The order allows a copyright holder to enter premises to search for and seize material that breaches copyright, without alerting the target through court proceedings.

Here are legal stories featured in Friday's foreign press... Germany's Deutsche Welle features government reaction to a Hamburg court's acquittal of alleged September 11 accomplice Abdelghani Mzoudi. Security officials will continue to observe Mzoudi while federal prosecutors initiate an appeal.... Zimbabwe's Independent reports the Supreme Court has declared constitutional the Media and Information Commission's power to require journalists' registration. The ruling has been criticized for the its inevitable chilling effect and for giving the government a tool with which to silence dissent in the media.... India's Rediff covers the developing law to regulate the nation's soft drink industry. The final version of the law is expected by mid-February. The impetus to regulate the Rs60 billion industry came after Parliament heard reports on high levels of pesticide in major brands.

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In Friday's regulations and agencies news, the Food and Drug Administration has announced new measures designed to improve the manner in which the FDA assists the Securities and Exchange Commission in detecting securities violations. The FDA has established a centralized procedure for FDA personnel to use in referring false or misleading statements by FDA-regulated firms to the SEC. Read the FDA letter to SEC directors outlining the changes and a press release from the SEC. AP has more.

Bloomberg: "The US Food and Drug Administration as early as today may ban ephedra, the nutritional supplement used to spur weight loss and enhance athletic performance that's been linked to heart damage and deaths. "

Reuters: "France's ruling conservatives have made two tactical concessions on their ban on religious emblems in state schools in a bid to ensure wide backing for the controversial law in a parliament vote next Tuesday."

Washington Post: "The head of the FBI's office here, who was temporarily reassigned last month, has been cleared of allegations that he leaked sensitive information to an international drug ring, the FBI announced Thursday."

Read the statement of FBI director Robert Mueller here. Read the Department of Justice press release here.

Washington Post: "In response to complaints from civil libertarians, Pentagon officials said yesterday that they will change some of the rules governing the work of lawyers representing alleged al Qaeda and Taliban fighters before military tribunals."

AP: "The judge presiding in the Tyco International trial refused to dismiss the majority of criminal counts against the company's former executives yesterday, saying prosecutors had presented 'sufficient evidence of wrongfulness' during four months of trial testimony."

In Friday's US law and business press, the Miami Daily Business Review reports that a FL circuit court is about to rule on FL Congressman Robert Wexler's lawsuit demanding a paper trail for touch-screen voting.... The Boston Business Journal reports that John Stefanini, chief counsel to MA House Speaker Thomas Finneran, has joined Boston's Greenberg Traurig LLP.... The New Jersey Law Journal reports on a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that judges cannot nix pleas if they decide later that they they don't like the plea bargain sentencing conditions.... The ABA Journal reports that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a TX case asking whether health care plans provided by an employer or union can be sued for damages in state court if they provide substandard medical care.... FindLaw's Writ features Hofstra law professor Joanna Grossman's column on MA's ruling on same-sex marriage and civil unions, as well as former White House counsel John W. Dean's book review of In An Uncertain World: Tough Choices From Wall Street To Washington by Robert Rubin and Jacob Weisberg.

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On February 6, 1933, the 20th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified by the requisite majority of states, moving the start of presidential, vice-presidential and congressional terms from March to January in an effort to shorten the problematic "lame duck" period. Learn more about the 20th Amendment.