Hunger-striking Serbian war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj refused to attend a preliminary hearing Wednesday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia , saying his voice was too weak to be able to participate. Seselj went on hunger strike early last week demanding that the ICTY dismiss his court-appointed lawyers, allow him to pick [...]

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York has asked that the financial institutions being sued by and counter-suing bankrupt Italian dairy giant Parmalat SpA negotiate a settlement with the company and has adjourned discovery proceedings until December 31st, Parmalat announced Wednesday. Parmalat’s stock rose by 4.8 [...]

Supreme Court offices in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be decentralized and spread to various parts of the capital city of Kinshasa, or even to other Congolese cities, following fire damage to one-third of the building earlier in the week, according to a statement from DRC Vice-President Azarias Ruberwa Wednesday. The building was set [...]

An Iraqi general and three senior officers have been arrested on accusations of corruption, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zawba'i told Reuters Wednesday. Although the reported arrest has not been confirmed by the US military or the Iraqi Defense Ministry, al-Zawba'i said Major General Abdul Jalil Khalaf Shuweil, in charge of troops in Kadhimiya, a [...]

A federal judge in New Orleans Wednesday rejected a bid to have all federal lawsuits against Merck & Co. brought in connection with the withdrawn painkiller Vioxx consolidated in a single national class action against the company. US District Judge Eldon Fallon , who is responsible for co-ordinating pre-trial procedures in the federal cases, said [...]

Rwandan President Paul Kagame Wednesday derided the recommendation of French anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere that he stand trial for the 1994 killing of former president Juvenal Habyarimana as "bullying and arrogant." Kagame has denied involvement in shooting down the plane that carried Habyarimana, leading to the former president's death, which in turn sparked the country's [...]

An Italian judge Wednesday refused the request of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to have one of the judges removed from presiding over his tax fraud trial. Berlusconi and co-defendant David Mills had asked Judge Edoardo d'Avossa to remove himself from the current trial, citing d'Avossa's involvement with other Berlusconi trials, including the "Medusa" [...]

A coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in Florida Tuesday claiming that officials in Sarasota County failed to investigate or report various alleged malfunctions with the touch-screen voting machines and are calling for a re-vote in Florida's hotly-contested 13th Congressional District. People for the American Way, Voter Action, the ACLU of Florida and the [...]

Torture and ill-treatment in Russia is regularly used to extract confessions from suspects , according to a report released Wednesday by Amnesty International . Noting that Russia was in violation of its national and international obligations, the human rights group found that Russian police regularly engage in the mistreatment of suspects and that "lawyers are [...]

The US Justice Department has withdrawn its notice of appeal of a federal judge's decision to vacate the conviction of former Enron founder Ken Lay . Lay, convicted in May of fraud and conspiracy charges for providing investors with false and misleading financial information from 1999 up until Enron filed bankruptcy in late 2001, died [...]