Japan's upper house of Parliament on Friday passed two bills lauded by proponents as bolstering national confidence, one elevating the Defense Agency to its pre-World War II status as a full ministry, and the other mandating that Japanese classrooms "cultivate an attitude that respects tradition and culture, that loves the nation and home country." The [...]

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald indicated Friday in court papers that he was "not aware" that any government witnesses in the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby intended to invoke executive privilege to avoid testifying, "and the government does not otherwise anticipate any of its witnesses moving to quash or limit trial subpoenas." Vice President Dick [...]

Morales v. Tilton, US District Court for the Northen District of California San Jose District, December 15, 2006 . Read the full text of the memorandum. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A federal judge issued a memorandum of intended decision Friday, concluding that California's lethal injection procedure creates "an undue and unnecessary risk" of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. The memorandum came in the case of condemned killer Michael Morales , who argued that it was not [...]

The war crimes Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina convicted its third defendant in one week on Friday when it sentenced Dragan Damjanovic to twenty years in prison. Damjanovic was found guilty on six of the seven counts of crimes against humanity listed in his indictment , including murder, torture and rape committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 [...]

Florida Governor Jeb Bush suspended all executions in the state Friday after a medical examiner said that the execution of Angel Diaz earlier this week was botched. Diaz endured a 34-minute-long execution and medical examiner Dr. William Hamilton said Friday that preliminary autopsy results showed that a second injection was required in the execution because [...]

European leaders are pushing to revive the European Constitution after its ratification by the Finnish parliament last week. Leaders of Spain and Luxembourg have called a conference in January for the sixteen EU member states that ratified the Constitution, as well as Bulgaria and Romania. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also declared her intent to [...]

Federal prosecutors have charged sixteen Bosnian Serb immigrants with immigration fraud for allegedly lying about their military experiences during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, the US Department of Justice announced Friday. One of those charged is accused of leading a Bosnian Serb unit that participated in the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims in 1995. The [...]

Luis Moreno-Ocampo , chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court , told the UN Security Council Thursday that his investigation into crimes committed in Darfur is almost complete, noting that he is "preparing to submit evidence to the ICC judges no later than February 2007." Moreno-Ocampo submitted a report to the Security Council pursuant to [...]

An Alabama jury returned a verdict in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. on Friday, concluding that the drug Vioxx did not cause the plaintiff in the case to suffer a heart attack. The jury also found that Merck did not withhold information prior to removing the drug from the market in 2004. The [...]