Chinese authorities have executed the founder of a Chinese Christian church and two of his close associates for allegedly ordering the murders of several members of a rival religious sect, a lawyer for Xu Shuangfu said Wednesday. The death penalty apparently imposed last week on the former head of the Three Grades of Servants Church [...]

South African Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka Thursday approved the country's Civil Unions Bill , making South Africa the first African nation to recognize same-sex unions . Mlambo-Ngcuka signed the measure into law on behalf of President Thabo Mbeki who is at a conference in Nigeria. Both houses of the South African parliament passed the measure [...]

A Mexican appeals court ruled Wednesday that a genocide trial against former Mexican President Luis Echeverria may proceed as long as prosecutors file formal charges against him before Friday, when the 30-year statute of limitations ends. The court effectively reversed previous rulings that the statute of limitations had already expired because Echeverria ended his role [...]

The population of individuals in US prisons rose by 2.7 percent in 2005, according to an annual report released Wednesday by the US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics . The report indicates that over 7 million people were either in jail, on probation, or on parole by the end of last year, with [...]

Mayfield v. United States, US District Court for the District of Oregon, November 29, 2006 . Read the full text of the settlement . Read the associated US Government apology [PDF}. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) decided Wednesday to move Serb nationalist war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj to a hospital unit adjoining its detention center at Scheveningen near The Hague to monitor his medical condition. Seselj has been on hunger strike for over two weeks, while demanding that the ICTY dismiss his [...]

Draft report on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners, European Parliament, November 28, 2006 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The Canadian Parliament will revisit the issue of same-sex marriage next week, with debate on a federal law permitting same-sex marriage scheduled to begin in the House of Commons Wednesday. The ruling Conservative Party in June promised to reconsider the law , which was passed in 2005 under the leadership of former Liberal Prime Minister [...]

US District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled in Washington, DC, Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) must reinstate certain housing payments for victims of Hurricane Katrina . Leon granted the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction against the payments stoppage, maintaining that FEMA had failed to provide evacuees with adequate explanations for their [...]

Gary Buseck : "Mitt Romney is about to leave the Massachusetts governorship and enter a presidential primary campaign built almost exclusively around his opposition to the now recognized right of liberty and equality under the Massachusetts constitution for two loving people to marry. While he's certainly entitled to his angst over the legislature's vote to [...]