The Shell Group agreed Thursday to pay $9.2 million to settle lawsuits brought last year by shareholders when the oil company admitted to overstating its oil and gas reserves by 20 percent in 2004. The lawsuits led to an overhaul of Shell's top management and the settlement requires the company to create policies and standards [...]

A Cuban-born anti-Castro former CIA operative withdrew his petition for asylum in the US Wednesday, stating that if he continued to testify, he was afraid he may have to reveal state secrets. Luis Posada Carriles entered the US illegally through Mexico earlier this year. Venezuelan officials have requested the extradition of Carriles , where he [...]

Detainees at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay have started another hunger strike in an effort to "receive a fair hearing and humane treatment," according to human rights lawyers with the Center for Constitutional Rights . The detainees ended an earlier strike on June 28 after the military promised that facility officers would comply [...]

US President George Bush told ABC's Good Morning America Thursday that there should be "zero tolerance" for the looters who have ransacked New Orleans' stores in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one day after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin declared "martial law" to deal with the looting situation . In the Thursday interview , Bush [...]

Three convicted murders were executed in Iraq Thursday, marking the first time the death penalty has been used since Saddam Hussein lost power in 2003. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani opposes the death penalty and refused to sign the men's death sentences after they were convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping, but Talabani's deputy signed on [...]

Martha Stewart will hand over her electronic ankle bracelet to federal authorities Thursday, ending the five-month house arrest portion of her sentence . Stewart was convicted in 2004 for conspiracy, making false statements and obstruction of justice. She has already served five months in jail and will be on probation until March 2007. Newsday has [...]

Changes to Military Commission Procedures, US Department of Defense Fact Sheet, August 31, 2005 . Read the full list of changes here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Report of the American Civil Liberties Union on the Nomination of District of Columbia Circuit Court Judge John Roberts Jr., to be Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court, August 2005; American Civil Liberties Union, August 31, 2005. Excerpt: "Roberts has relied on notions of "judicial restraint" and "states' rights" throughout his career to [...]

Furious at a rising tide of lawlessness in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Wednesday evening reassigned 1,500 New Orleans police from search-and-rescue missions to halt widespread looting in the battered and flooded city. Declaring "martial law" in a dramatic invocation of his civic emergency powers, he directed officers to do [...]

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has cut short a vacation and returned to New York in an attempt to break an impasse reached by negotiators discussing an overhaul of the UN and a related series of intrenational initiatives. A 33-member panel has been negotiating a set of reforms for consideration at a Sept. 14-16 summit [...]