Armenia President Robert Kocharian declared a state of emergency Saturday, as police forced approximately 15,000 demonstrators to disperse from the capital city of Yerevan. The protests are the result of the contested February 19 presidential election in which Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan , a Kocharian ally, was declared the winner . Supporters of the opposition [...]

Pakistani police on Saturday filed preliminary charges against Baitullah Mehsud , the top Taliban leader in Pakistan, and four others in the assassination of former prime minister Benzhair Bhutto . The charges were filed at an anti-terrorism court in the city of Rawalpindi and arrest warrants were issued for Mehsud, Ibadur Rehman, Imramullah, Faiz Muhammad [...]

An Iraqi appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction and death sentence of Mohammad Munaf , a US citizen and former translator charged with orchestrating the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists held for 55 days in Iraq in 2005. Munaf's lawyer said that the charges were dismissed after the court could not determine the role [...]

The court-martial of US Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich was postponed indefinitely on Friday to allow prosecutors time to appeal a judge's decision to throw out a subpoena for unaired footage from a CBS interview with Wuterich. Military prosecutors argued that the additional footage contains information vital to the case, and that Wuterich may have [...]

The military government of Myanmar on Friday brought charges against 20 pro-democracy dissidents under a new security law, charges which carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. The dissidents were charged under the so-called 5/96 law , which prohibits, among others, any "inciting, demonstrating, delivering of speeches…in order to undermine the stability [...]

Spain's National Court on Friday said that it will drop its prosecution of former Argentine naval officer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo and extradite him back to his home country where he will stand trial for for his role in the disappearance of hundreds of people during a 1976 Argentine military coup. Cavallo has been in Spanish [...]

The Supreme Court of Virginia on Friday upheld the nation's first felony conviction for computer spamming, rejecting admitted spammer Jeremy Jaynes' appeal of a lower court ruling that Virginia's anti-spamming statute does not violate the First Amendment or the so-called dormant Commerce Clause of the US Constitution and is not unconstitutionally vague. The court held [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Don Rothwell of Australian National University College of Law, says that a looming May 2009 deadline for states to file data with the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf established under the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC) may force the US to accede to the LOSC in the very [...]

Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. et al., v. David C. Winter, Secretary of the Navy, et al., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, February 29, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey said in a Friday letter to Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that he will not order a grand jury investigation to determine if misdemeanor contempt of Congress charges should be laid against former White House counsel Harriet Miers and current White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten [...]