The United Nations highest court has ordered Japan to halt a whaling program that it found to be in violation of a moratorium on commercial whaling thats been in place since 1986. Japan had claimed that its whaling activities in the Southern Ocean, which have been ongoing since 1987 as part of two successive programs, were being legally conducted as scientific research, but the UNs International Court of Justice found its research claims to be tenuous and ordered that it end the program. Japan said that it would abide by the cases ruling, reports The Wall Street Journal. Japan began scientific whaling shortly after the commercial ban was put in place