The US Marine Corps Wednesday held separate hearings preliminary to possible court-martial at Camp Pendleton , California, for two of the eight American soldiers, including seven Marines and one Navy corpsman, charged with the April 26 murder and kidnapping of an Iraqi man in the town of Hamdania. The eight men allegedly dragged the man [...]

A district court in Tokyo Wednesday dismissed an action filed on behalf of eight Chinese women who claim they were forced to act as sex slaves, or "comfort women" , for Japanese soldiers during World War II. The plaintiffs, teenagers during the war, sought both monetary compensation and an apology from the Japanese government, and [...]

US District Judge Eldon E. Fallon of the Eastern District of Louisiana on Wednesday threw out a jury verdict holding Merck liable for $50 million in compensatory damages to a retired FBI agent who claimed Merck's painkiller Vioxx caused his heart attack. Fallon called the jury award "grossly excessive" and ordered a new trial to [...]

A Bolivian constitutional convention championed by President Evo Morales has delayed voting on a motion that would allow the assembly to create a constitutional framework without having to answer to Congress or the judiciary. Tuesday's delay results from disputes between delegates from Morales' Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS) , but a vote could occur later [...]

The Santiago Court of Appeals has temporarily removed Judge Carlos Cerda from presiding over a probe into the finances of former Chile dictator Augusto Pinochet , after hearing arguments that Cerda has a "personal bias" against Pinochet. Pinochet's lawyer had argued that Cerda demonstrated his bias towards Pinochet by voting against Pinochet in a previous [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Wednesday found Croatian journalist Josip Jovic guilty of contempt of the Tribunal for publishing transcripts of a closed court session and revealing the identity of a witness, current Croatian President Stipe Mesic , who testified in the Tihomir Blaskic case . Jovic, editor of Slobodna [...]

South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds on Tuesday ordered a last minute reprieve for death row inmate Elijah Page , calling the 1984 state lethal injection law outdated and expressing concern that state officials slated to perform the execution were at risk of violating the state statute. The South Dakota statute requires a combination of two [...]

A staff attorney with the US Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps was charged Tuesday with relaying secret national defense information to a person outside the government "with intent or reason to believe that the said information was to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation." [...]

A lawyer involved in the CIA leak case said Tuesday that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has identified himself as the "initial and primary source" for the Robert Novak column that revealed Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA affiliation. The New York Times also learned from lawyers close to the case that Armitage learned of [...]

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a pesticide rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , saying that the regulation does not violate the Clean Air Act even though it may conflict with an international environmental treaty signed by the US. In December 2004, the EPA issued a rule identifying the once-popular pesticide [...]