12 Dec 11 | Index Index, minipost
The death penalty has been dropped against a USA journalist in Philadelphia who has spent thirty years on death row. Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing white police officer Daniel Faulknerin 1981, will have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, after Faulkner’s widow reportedly persuaded prosecutors to stop pushing for the death penalty. The death sentence of Abu-Jamal, a former member of the African-American leftist group Black Panther, was quashed in April, and the state of Pennsylvania was given six months to select a jury and hold a new sentencing hearing, or agree to a life sentence.
12 Dec 11 | Index Index, minipost
Funding has been pulled from a student newspaper in New York, following the publication of an article about pre-marital sex. The Student Council at Yeshiva University, the Orthodox Jewish college in Manhattan, opted to withdraw the $500 it takes to publish The Beacon after the anonymous article received more than 41,000 hits and sparked an argument about “the soul of the university.”
The decision sparked a campus-wide debate on censorship at the university, where the principles are based on the philosophy of Torah U’madda – the relationship between the secular world and Judaism.
24 Oct 11 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
A New York Times reporter may be forced to reveal his sources, despite a ruling which said his testimony was protected by reporters privilege. On Wednesday, the Department of Justice asked a federal appeals court to force James Risen to testify about his sources in the trial of a CIA officer who was accused of leaking top secret information. In the hearing, federal prosecutors appealed the ruling from a US District court on 29 July that Risen did not have to reveal his sources in the trial of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Stirling. Risen’s lawyer Joel Kurtzberg has said they will fight the appeal.
13 Oct 11 | Index Index, minipost
A long-awaited report on a Texan estuary is being delayed, following accusations that important information in the original report has been omitted for political reasons. John Anderson, the professor of oceanography at Rice University has accused the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) of deleting references to climate change, human impact on the environment and sea-level rise. Anderson believes that the omissions have been made for partisan, rather than scientific, reasons. A spokesperson for the environmental agency said that the deletions had been made because the TCEQ did not agree with information in the article.
