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Bollywood filmmaker challenges censoring of drug-abuse film
Legal Business |
2016/06/09 15:48
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A Bollywood film producer took his row with India's censor board to a court Wednesday, challenging dozens of cuts and changes to a film that depicts the menace of drug abuse in the northern state of Punjab.
Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalini said in a newspaper interview that the movie wrongly depicts 70 percent of people of the state consuming drugs and defaming them. He told reporters that the censor board has approved the movie for screening in theaters with the cuts ordered.
He accused producer Anurag Kashyap of whipping up a controversy to create interest in his film. Compared to Hollywood, movie norms in India are extremely strict. Censorship authorities often order filmmakers — both Indian and foreign — to chop scenes deemed offensive. Films with graphic content can be barred completely.
Last year, India's censor authorities ordered that kissing scenes in the James Bond movie, "Spectre," be shortened before it was released in the country.
Kashyap asked the Mumbai High Court to overrule the cuts ordered by the censor board. The court is expected to take up the petition later Wednesday. It could reject the matter or order reconsideration.
Kashyap said the censor board chief Nihalini demanded 89 cuts to the film and even asked him to drop the name of the state from the title, "Udta Punjab," or "Flying Punjab."
Bollywood producers and directors rallied behind Kashyap in his fight with the censor board. "The job of the censor board is to certify films and not suggest cuts."
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High court rejects Google's appeal in class action lawsuit
Legal Business |
2016/06/07 17:23
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from Google over a class action lawsuit filed by advertisers who claim the internet company displayed their ads on "low quality" web sites.
The justices on Monday let stand a lower court ruling that said the lawsuit representing hundreds of thousands of advertisers using Google's AdWords program could go forward.
Google argued that a federal appeals court in San Francisco should not have approved the class action because damages must be calculated individually for each company advertiser. The appeals court rejected that argument and approved use of a formula that would calculate harm based on the average advertiser's experience.
Google runs what is by far the world's largest digital ad network. It generated $67 billion in revenue last year.
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Planned Parenthood shooting defendant returning to court
Legal Business |
2016/05/11 16:56
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A man who admitted killing three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic is returning to court for the continuation of a hearing on whether he's mentally competent to stand trial.
A psychologist who examined 57-year-old Robert Dear is scheduled to testify Tuesday.
Dear is charged with 179 counts including murder, attempted murder and assault in the Nov. 27 shootings at the Colorado Springs clinic. Nine people were injured in the attack.
In court, he has declared himself a "warrior for the babies" and said he was guilty.
The hearing started last month, when two psychologists testified that Dear isn't competent to stand trial.
If the judge agrees, Dear's case would be put on hold while he undergoes treatment at a state psychiatric hospital intended to restore him to competency.
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Obama's power over immigration drives Supreme Court dispute
Legal Business |
2016/04/15 06:42
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The raging political fight over immigration comes to the Supreme Court on Monday in a dispute that could affect millions of people who are in the United States illegally.
The court is weighing the fate of Obama administration programs that could shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and grant them the legal right to hold a job.
Among them is Teresa Garcia of suburban Seattle, who has spent 14 years in the United States illegally after staying beyond the expiration of her tourist visa in 2002.
She's already gotten much of what she wanted when she chose not to return to her native Mexico. Her two sons are benefiting from an earlier effort that applies to people who were brought here illegally as children. Garcia's 11-year-old daughter is an American citizen.
Now, she would like the same for herself and her husband, a trained accountant who works construction jobs. Neither can work legally.
"To have a Social Security number, that means for me to have a better future. When I say better future, we are struggling with the little amount of money my husband is getting for the whole family. It makes for stress every day. We struggle to pay for everything," Garcia said.
The programs announced by President Barack Obama in November 2014 would apply to parents whose children are citizens or are living in the country legally. Eligibility also would be expanded for the president's 2012 effort that helped Garcia's sons. More than 700,000 people have taken advantage of that earlier program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The new program for parents and the expanded program for children could reach as many as 4 million people, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
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New York's top court: Parents can legally eavesdrop on kids
Legal Business |
2016/04/06 17:35
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New York's highest court says parents can legally eavesdrop on young children, establishing an exception to state law against wiretaps without the consent of at least one person on a call.
The Court of Appeals split 4-3 in deciding such monitoring is justified when a parent or guardian reasonably believes it would be in the child's best interests to listen to and tape phone conversations.
Tuesday's ruling is in a case involving a cellphone recording of Anthony Badalamenti threatening to beat a 5-year-old boy. The boy's biological father made the recording.
Badalamenti lived with the boy's mother. He was convicted of child endangerment, assault and weapon possession.
His attorney challenged the tape as inadmissible evidence.
The ruling upheld a decision by a mid-level appeals court. |
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Karadzic convicted of genocide, sentenced to 40 years
Legal Business |
2016/03/24 15:43
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A U.N. court convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide and nine other charges Thursday and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for orchestrating Serb atrocities throughout Bosnia's 1992-95 war that left 100,000 people dead.
As he sat down after hearing his sentence, Karadzic slumped slightly in his chair, but showed little emotion.
The U.N. court found Karadzic guilty of genocide in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Europe's worst mass murder since the Holocaust.
Presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon said Karadzic was the only person in the Bosnian Serb leadership with the power to halt the genocide.
In a carefully planned operation, Serb forces transported Muslim men to sites around the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia and gunned them down before dumping their bodies into mass graves.
Kwon said Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, intended "that every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica be killed."
Karadzic was also held criminally responsible for murder, attacking civilians and terror for overseeing the deadly 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during the war and for taking hostage U.N. peacekeepers.
However, the court acquitted Karadzic in a second genocide charge, for a campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces.
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White S.C. trooper pleads guilty in shooting of unarmed black man
Legal Business |
2016/03/15 22:57
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A white South Carolina trooper pleaded guilty Monday to assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature in the 2014 shooting an unarmed black driver seconds after a traffic stop.
Trooper Sean Groubert, 32, faces up to 20 years in prison. The shooting captured on dash-cam video from the trooper's patrol car shocked the country, coming during a wave of questionable police shootings.
Levar Jones was walking into a convenience store in September 2014 when Groubert got out of his patrol car and demanded Jones' driver's license.
Jones turned back to reach into his car and Groubert fired four shots. Jones' wallet is seen flying out of his hands.
Groubert's boss, state Public Safety Director Leroy Smith, fired Groubert after seeing the video.
Jones was shot in the hip and survived. He walked into the courtroom Monday with a noticeable limp and played with a Rubik's Cube before the hearing started.
Video of the encounter was played in the courtroom and showed Groubert pulling up to Jones without his siren on, and the trooper asking Jones for his license after he also was out of his car.
As Jones turns and reaches back into his car, Groubert shouts, "Get outta the car, get outta the car." He begins firing and unloads a third shot as Jones staggers away, backing up with his hands raised, and then a fourth.
From the first shot to the fourth, the video clicks off three seconds.
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