Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters will be jailed if they continue to refuse to identify the person who leaked secret grand jury testimony from Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and other athletes, regarding an investigation into the now-defunct Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) , a federal judge said Thursday. Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada published a [...]

Christian protestors in Indonesia burned cars, government buildings, a prison and Muslim-owned businesses Friday following the executions of three Roman Catholic men convicted in 2001 of leading a Christian militia which killed at least 70 Muslims in 2000 . Thousands of protestors gathered in Flores, the men's birthplace, and in the largely Roman Catholic province [...]

US v. Libby, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, September 21, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Roy v. Secretary for Justice, Hong Kong Court of Appeal, September 21, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Senior US Senate Republicans reached an agreement on military commissions legislation with the White House Thursday that would make the President the sole arbiter of the meaning of the Geneva Conventions for the United States and would bar litigants such as detainees from invoking the Conventions in habeas or civil actions in the federal courts. [...]

US Central Intelligence Agency officers concerned about being prosecuted for illegal interrogation tactics refused to carry out interrogations of terror suspects, contributing to pressure on the Bush administration to empty its secret prisons and transfer top terrorism suspects to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , according to a report in the Financial Times. While US officials have [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said Thursday in Geneva that "the situation as far as torture is concerned in Iraq is now completely out of hand", and is so bad that "many people say that it is worse than in the times of Saddam Hussein." Nowak has not been able to visit Iraq [...]

Amnesty International said Thursday that China has not been working quickly enough to meet its promise to improve human rights in the country in order to host the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Amnesty said China's overall record was poor, and suggested that although progress had been made in some areas, rights protection had deteriorated [...]

Lawyers for the US Department of Justice Thursday asked the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a ruling of Judge Garr King of US District Court in Portland to allow a lawsuit by the US branch of the Saudi Arabia-based Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation to proceed against the US government over the warrantless wiretapping [...]

A group of five United Nations human rights investigators told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Thursday that pending US legislation drafted by the Bush administration to clarify interrogation methods for terror suspects will breach Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions , which bars "outrages on personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." [...]