South African National Prosecuting Authority acting Director Mokotedi Mpshe said Thursday that prosecutors have sufficient evidence to support corruption charges against Jacob Zuma , who earlier this week was elected leader of the African National Congress , putting him in position to become the country's next president. Zuma has been facing corruption allegations and other [...]

The US Senate and House of Representatives Wednesday passed by voice vote the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 , which closes a loophole that allowed Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho to purchase firearms despite a court order mandating psychiatric treatment. The US House first approved the bill in June; the Senate passed an amended [...]

United States of America v. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Guantanamo Bay Military Commission, December 19, 2007 . Read the full text of the decision . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The US Central Intelligence Agency will turn over information to Congress regarding the CIA's destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation of terror suspects , Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday. Reyes' committee had begun the process of drawing up subpoenas for CIA documents after the Justice Department initially [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that a recent proposal to turn the contentious northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk into an independent federal regionate could be a starting point for further discussions that could meet the needs of Turkomen, Kurds and Arabs alike… Last week, in [...]

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) Wednesday filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against private security contractor Blackwater USA on behalf of an Iraqi man killed during a September 9 shooting in Baghdad. The lawsuit alleges that Blackwater guards fired indiscriminately into a crowd of civilians, [...]

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Wednesday rejected California's request for a waiver that would have allowed it and 16 other states following its lead to impose stricter greenhouse gas emissions standards on cars and light trucks. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson told reporters that the White House prefers a single unified national standard to [...]

Fair elections in Pakistan are impossible as long as the judiciary remains beholden to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and scores of lawyers, activists and government critics remain in detention, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Wednesday. The 84-page report details how the November 3 declaration of emergency has been used to cripple [...]

Three UK residents released Wednesday from Guantanamo Bay were detained by UK authorities when they arrived in the UK later in the day. Libyan Omar Deghayes and Algerian Abdennour Sameur were arrested and Jordanian Jamil el Banna was detained under the UK Terrorism Act . Deghayes and el-Banna may face extradition to Spain, although the [...]

A French court Wednesday sentenced five Frenchmen released from the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay to one year in prison for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise" after a retrial. A sixth defendant was acquitted. The men were charged with allegedly attending combat training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. They were repatriated [...]