[JURIST] The Somali parliament voted Saturday to adopt Islamic Sharia law [CFR backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. A parliamentary spokesperson said that more than 300 Somali MPs voted [AFP report] for the implementation of Sharia law as part of an attempt by Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed [BBC profile] to bring stability to the failed state. Last month, Ahmed announced [JURIST report] that he would support the imposition of a moderate form of Sharia Islamic religious law, as part of a cease-fire agreement with the country's Hizb al-Islamiya and Al-Shabaab rebels. Ahmed said, however, that he would not agree [CNN report] to provisions that would prohibit girls from attending school, require women to wear headscarves, or ban music and television. According to Minister of Information Farhan Ali Mohamed, Islamic scholars and imams will be invited [AP report] to review the country's constitution to make changes to portions of the document they find to be un-Islamic.

Somalia has endured a lengthy civil war and several rounds of failed peace talks [BBC timeline] since the collapse of its last civil government in 1991. The country's transitional government is just now shifting its base [VOA report] from Djibouti to the Somali capital of Mogadishu. In December, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] released a report [text, PDF; JURIST report] accusing both rebels and the government of having committed war crimes in the conflict. In January 2007, the transitional government began imposing martial law [JURIST report] over areas under the government's control.

[JURIST] The Revolutionary Court of Iran convicted US journalist Roxana Saberi [advocacy website] of espionage earlier, sentencing her to eight years in prison, according to her lawyer Saturday. The trial, in which Saberi was accused of passing classified information to US intelligence agencies, was conducted earlier this week [JURIST report] in proceedings closed to the public [AP report], and news of her conviction [NYT report] came from press contact with Saberi's father and her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi. Saberi was arrested [NYT report] last month after buying a bottle of wine, as alcohol consumption is banned in Iran. Initially, it appeared she would face charges for working as a freelance journalist for NPR and the BBC without Iranian press credentials, but once she was in custody the Iranian government charged her with espionage [AP report]. US officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton [official profile], have called for Saberi to be released [NYT report]. Clinton expressed disappointment [press release] Saturday with the court's decision. Under Iranian law, espionage is punishable by execution.

Last year, the Committee to Protect Journalists [advocacy website] reported that Iran ranked sixth in the world [report] for total number of imprisoned journalists. In the past two years, Iran has arrested several journalists and scholars on espionage charges. In 2007, Iran accused four Iranian-Americans of belonging to a US-organized spy network. Iran formally charged [JURIST report] Iranian-American scholar Dr. Haleh Esfandiari [WWC profile] for allegedly plotting "against the sovereignty of the country." Iran also charged Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh [OSI press release] and Radio Farda [media website] correspondent Parnaz Azima with allegedly engaging in an espionage conspiracy [JURIST report]. An Iranian judge said that Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh admitted to carrying out some "activities" [JURIST report], although it was unclear if their statements were tantamount to an admission of spying.

[JURIST] A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit [official website] vacated [opinion, PDF] Friday the Bush-era program [MMS backgrounder] for leasing of land for oil and gas drilling on the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) along the Alaskan coast. The court held that the Department of Interior (DOI) [official website] had not carried out an environmental sensitivity study in accordance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) [text, PDF; MMS backgrounder] when it ranked the sensitivity of various program areas in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas only in terms of the physical characteristics of the shoreline of those areas. In its opinion, the court disagreed with the DOI's reliance on the Environmental Sensitivity Index [NOAA materials], developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) [official website], which ranks the sensitivity of different shoreline areas to oil spills:

Section 18(a)(2)(G) [of the OSCLA] states clearly that an agency must assess the environmental sensitivity of “different areas of the outer Continental Shelf” in order to make its determination of when and where to explore and develop additional areas for oil. Based on this language alone, Interior’s use of the NOAA study runs afoul of this provision because it assesses only the effects of oil spills on shorelines. Interior provides no explanation for how the environmental sensitivity of coastal shoreline areas can serve as a substitute for the environmental sensitivity of OCS areas, when the coastline and proposed leasing areas are so distant from each other. This interpretation runs directly counter to the statutory language.

[JURIST] The National Institute of Health (NIH) [official website] issued proposed guidelines [text] for funding human embryonic stem cell [NIH backgrounder; JURIST news archive] research Friday, which limits funding to embryos that were created to be used in fertility clinics but were no longer needed and would have been discarded. Additionally, the donor must have consented to giving the embryos for research purposes. The guidelines were issued in accordance with the executive order [text; JURIST report] issued by US President Barack Obama [official website] in March, which removed the Bush administration's restrictions on federal funding for research on stem cells. The guidelines also state that stem cells cannot be used for certain research techniques involving animals and cannot be obtained from somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning, and from embryos specifically created for research. According to the Acting Director of the NIH, Dr. Raynard Kington [official profile], there may be up to 700 stem cell lines that could be researched [CNN report] compared to about 88 allowed under the previous regulations.

The new guidelines reverse previous rules that limited government funding to only stem cell lines that were in existence as of August 2001. Despite pressure from the scientific community the previous administration refused similar changes to funding guidelines. In 2007, then-president George W. Bush vetoed [JURIST report] the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007 [S5 materials], which was intended to relax funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. The administration rejected the bill saying it would compel taxpayers to support the destruction of human embryos. In 2006, Bush vetoed a previous version [JURIST report] of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which was passed by the Senate to remove restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, saying he would not provide federal funding for stem cell research because many consider the destruction of embryos to be murder.