The US military should take a greater, perhaps sometimes even temporarily a leading role in disaster recovery, and policy steps should to be taken to facilitate this, according to a 228-page White House report released Thursday on lessons learned from the Hurricane Katrina disaster . Noting that the military response to Hurricane Katrina had been [...]

Fusako Shigenobu , founder of the terrorist group known as the Japanese Red Army (JRA) , was convicted in a Tokyo court Thursday and sentenced to twenty years in prison for kidnapping and attempted murder during a 1974 attack on the French Embassy in The Hague. She was also convicted of passport violations. Shigenobu founded [...]

US District Judge Melinda Harmon has given preliminary approval to a $6.7 billion settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by Enron shareholders, an attorney involved in the case said Wednesday. Shareholders brought suit against several banks, accusing them of helping Enron hide the financial misdeeds that ultimately led to the company's downfall. The agreement, which [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law says that regardless of the ruling in the wake of the much-anticipated BlackBerry injunction hearing, critical questions remain about the patent litigation process that may yet require Congressional intervention… Tomorrow, the world will be watching a federal courtroom in Richmond, Virginia. There, [...]

The South Dakota Senate on Wednesday approved by a 23-12 vote a bill that would ban all abortions, excluding only those necessary to save a woman's life. A similar bill has already passed the state House by a vote of 47-22. After legislators reconcile minor differences in the two versions of the bill, the final [...]

Leading Thursday's international brief, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been named among possible target for UN Security Council sanctions being considered against high-ranking officials in the Sudanese government that are thought to be complicit in human rights abuses currently occurring in Darfur . A leaked report named al-Bashir as a possible target and also identified [...]

Belarus newspaper Zgoda has been criminally charged for reprinting cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad that have sparked violent protests across the Muslim world. The Belarus State Security Committee , still known as the KGB, has cited Zgoda for breach of Part 1, Article 130 of the Belarussian Criminal Code, which prohibits the incitement of 'racial, [...]

The Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) has taken jurisdiction over a case investigating Guatemalan officers accused of genocide and torture during the civil unrest from 1978 to 1986. The allegations were made 1999 by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu , who felt she could not get justice for the atrocities committed during Guatemalan [...]

Perfect 10 v. Google, United States District Court, Central District of California, February 22, 2006 . Read the text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Command's Responsibility: Detainee Deaths in US Custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, Human Rights First, February 22, 2006 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.