Death Penalty News

Philippine legal procedure is horribly ill-equipped for 21st century transnational issues like human trafficking and modern slavery, the drug trade, terrorism, regional environmental degradation, money laundering, and the legal needs of the Filipino diaspora, all of which cross state borders The new year greeted the Philippine legal community with 2 controversial Court of Appeals decisions, in the cases of the Indonesian drug arrest and pending execution Mary Jane Veloso, and the murder of Doc Gerry Ortega. Both these decisions ironically revolve around the important concept of due process, the legal virtue all but happily ignored when it came to the casualties of the present drug war. Yet the controversy we tackle now showcases the other unjust extreme: a myopic view that, just as happily, favors technicality over the substantive ends of the judicial process, lip service convenience over the obligations of professional thoroughness. In both the drug war deaths and these...

Microsoft Corp.’s Skype has vanished from Apple Inc. and Android smartphone app stores in China, becoming the latest victim in Beijing’s sweeping internet clampdown. The internet phone and video service was no longer available on Apple’s iOS or on popular local Android stores such as Xiaomi Corp.’s, though it still functioned as of Wednesday. The Ministry of Public Security notified Apple that a number of voice-over-internet-protocol apps didn’t comply with local law and the U.S. company subsequently removed them, a spokeswoman for the iPhone maker said. Those apps, which enable voice calls among other things, remain in place elsewhere. It’s unclear why Skype, which has operated for years in China despite making little headway against more popular services like WeChat, was targeted. Under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party has tightened controls over online content and taken aim at messaging services in particular, requiring users to register their real names and threatening ac...