JUDICIARY

A federal judge in California has allowed a committee of Hewlett-Packard's directors to begin a probe into the circumstances culminating in Mark Hurd's departure from the company.

Will MTV's controversial teen-age based drama Skins be taken off air amid advertiser and ratings woes as well as ire from media watchdog group?

A judge in Houston, Tx. has found Allen Stanford, the alleged mastermind behind a $7 billion Ponzi scheme, is unfit to stand trial due to an addiction to pain medication.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has hit out at the heads of parliament and the judiciary, accusing them of interfering in his government's business, media reported Wednesday.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who played a vital role in the 1998 al Qaeda bomb attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people including 12 Americans and wounded thousands of others, has been sentenced to life by a Manhattan federal court.

The Department of Justice was reprimanded today by the U.S. Congress for suggesting the necessity of the Internet Data Retention legislation, which if passed would require Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to preserve records of user activity longer, but failing to provide more details on how it could aid in criminal investigations.

Scott Farah, the head of New Hampshire-based failed mortgage firm Financial Resources Mortgage has been sentenced to 15 years in prison by a federal judge for duping hundreds of investors.

The Washington D.C. Court of Appeals, for the first time since 1900, has decided not to impose disbarment as a sanction on a lawyer found guilty of intentionally misappropriating client funds because the was, in intent and effect, in the best interest of his ward.

A New York federal judge has dismissed a class-action lawsuit that was seeking to force Philip Morris USA Inc. to pay for medical monitoring program for Marlboro smokers.

Lawyers for Silvio Berlusconi have presented evidence to magistrates from dozens of witnesses denying accounts of wild sex parties at a luxurious villa belonging to the embattled Italian prime minister.

Federal bankruptcy judges in Delaware are due to hold separate hearings Monday on requests by two defunct subprime mortgage lenders to destroy thousands of boxes of original loan documents.

The Parents Television Council (PTC) has called on the chairmen of the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees and the Department of Justice to open an investigation regarding child pornography and exploitation on MTV's Skins.

Abdel Nur, a Guyanese national, has been sentenced by a U.S. district court judge to 15 years in prison for providing material support to a terrorist group that had conspired to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, by exploding fuel tanks and the fuel pipeline under the airport.

Loughner, 22, is accused of opening fire on Giffords and a crowd of bystanders outside a grocery store on January 8, killing six people, including a federal judge, and wounding 13 others. He is expected to face additional federal and state charges.

ATLANTA, Jan 19 - A U.S. high-school librarian could face criminal charges for conducting online research while she was a juror in a capital-murder trial.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi faces a prostitution investigation in Milan over a teenage nightclub dancer who attended parties at his private residence, prosecutors said on Friday.

A man who had hijacked a Puerto Rico-bound Pan American flight 281 to Cuba four decades ago and then voluntarily returned to the United States in October 2009 and surrendered to federal authorities so that he could see his family again, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison without parole.

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) to hold off a $60 million contract awarded to Microsoft to integrate 13 DOI e-mail systems and consider competing bids from Google and others.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are calling for new gun-control legislation in the wake of the shootings in Tucson, Arizona last Saturday that left six people dead and 15 injured, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-AZ, who remains in critical condition, as do five other victims.

A federal judge in New York has okayed a class action lawsuit that accuses Leucadia National Corp., a financial services firm, the debt-collection law firm Mel S. Harris & Associates, and a Brooklyn-based process serving agency Samserv Inc., of a racketeering scheme that allowed them to fraudulently secure default judgments in New York courts against unwitting consumers around the country.

House Republicans wasted no time in going after President Obama’s healthcare reforms of 2010.