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This isn't the first time someone has challenged the clarity of Britain's assisted-suicide law. In a similar case eight years ago, Diane Pretty, who had motor neuron disease, wanted to know whether her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her die at home or accompanied her to an assisted-suicide clinic abroad. But the court rejected her request for clarification, and her illness took her life...
...seeking to clarify the law, Michael Smythe, head of public policy at law firm Clifford Chance LLP in London, anticipates that the Director of Public Prosecutions will define what kinds of people - with what kinds of illnesses - others can assist with ending their lives. "You can imagine the public brouhaha if the guidelines permitted those who were temporarily ill or not very ill to be assisted in their premature passing without any sanctions for those assisting them," he says. (Read "True Freedom...
...guidelines will make it easier for people to travel to commit suicide, experts point out that with clarity could come a rigidity that ends up punishing people who have up until now escaped prosecution. In practice, ambiguity can be a good thing, says Emily Jackson, a professor of law at the London School of Economics. "The ambiguity in the law has allowed a degree of discretion to be exercised on compassionate grounds," she says. "If there is a very clear set of criteria, there may be pressure to prosecute any case which might look as if it falls outside...
...reopening of the Borsellino case has prompted others to talk as well. Several top Italian government and law-enforcement officials involved in the early 1990s probes have given their version of events in interviews. Also speaking out was the son of the former mayor of Palermo, Vito Ciancimino, who was the local political link for the Corleonese clan. Massimo Ciancimino has reportedly revealed a portion of the contents of his late father's secret archives, which investigators hope can help solve a series of Mafia mysteries, including the state's alleged role in the Borsellino killing. (Read "Meet the Modern...
...copies of the ultraconservative newspaper Kayhan blasted the headline "Evidence of Mousavi's Betrayal of Iran Exposed!" The newspaper, a favored mouthpiece for Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, went on to call for the trial of Khatami and Mousavi for "acting against God," a crime punishable under Shari'a law by death. An expanding witch hunt would be reminiscent of a massive purge of dissidents in 1988, when thousands of leftist political prisoners were executed for being kafirs, or infidels...