Former Guatemalan soldier sentenced to over 5,000 years for taking part in 1982 massacre of 171
A Guatemalan court Wednesday sentenced a former soldier to 5,160 years in prison for the massacre of 171 people in what is considered one of the worst atrocities in that country's 36-year-long civil war. Prosecutors said Santos Lopez participated in the 1982 mass killings of ...
Court finds man at center of Nobel-linked Swedish Academy rape scandal guilty
A Swedish court on Monday found a man at the center of a scandal that has rocked the academy that awards the Nobel literature prize guilty of rape and sentenced him to two years in jail. The charges against Jean-Claude Arnault prompted some members of ...
Sendai court blames lack of local government plan for deaths of school children in 2011 tsunami
The ruling said that the school, sited up to 1.5 meters above sea level, should have been designated in the city’s hazard map as being vulnerable to tsunami.
Former NHK reporter sentenced to 21 years in prison for series of rapes
A court sentenced on Wednesday a 29-year-old former reporter for public broadcaster NHK to 21 years in prison for raping three women. While Yasutaka Tsurumoto consistently denied the allegations during his trial, the Yamagata District Court ruled that he was the assailant in all three ...
Peruvian family facing deportation files lawsuit seeking special permission to remain in Japan
A Peruvian mother and her two teenage children filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking special permission to stay in Japan, claiming that deportation would harm the children, who were born and raised in Japan. Nelly Moreno, 51, her 15-year-old daughter and her 14-year-old son filed ...
Justice seen hamstrung as experts warn court interpreters should be licensed
Courts are supposed to be bastions of justice. But equal justice may be thwarted for some defendants owing to language barriers. Despite all the various training seminars and guide books preparing newly registered court interpreters for the job, the current pool of interpreters are not ...
Unease about white supremacy grows after train stabbings in liberal Oregon city with a racist past
Unease about white supremacist activity in Portland has deepened following last Friday's fatal stabbings of two men who tried to shield young women from a man making an anti-Muslim tirade, and some people worry that the famously tolerant community could see a resurgence of ...
With Manning granted clemency, will WikiLeaks head Assange keep promise to agree to extradition?
President Barack Obama's decision Tuesday to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence brought fresh attention to another figure involved in the U.S. Army leaker's case: Julian Assange. On Twitter last week, Assange's anti-secrecy site, WikiLeaks, posted, "If Obama grants Manning clemency Assange will agree to U.S. extradition ...
Two men indicted for allegedly intimidating lay judges in yakuza trial
Prosecutors indicted two men Friday on suspicion of intimidating lay judges during the trial of a senior member of a yakuza crime syndicate in the first such charges since Japan's lay judge system was introduced in 2009. The two are Toshimi Kusumoto, a former gang ...
Baseball star Kiyohara pleads guilty to drug use in highly watched Tokyo trial
Former baseball star Kazuhiro Kiyohara admits possessing and using illegal drugs as his trial kicks off at the Tokyo District Court.
A court in India's capital ruled Saturday that there's enough evidence in a stalking and sexual harassment case for former U.N. climate chief Rajendra Pachauri to stand trial. Judge Shivani Chauhan announced that the next hearing in the case will be on July 11, the ...
Massachusetts court that opened door to same-sex marriage to hear gay parental rights case
The same state court that paved the way for same-sex marriage in the United States is now being asked to decide a complicated case about the parental rights of a once-partnered but unmarried gay couple. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the state that more ...
