The US Supreme Court recessed for the summer Monday morning without any announcement from Chief Justice William Rehnquist on his possible retirement from the bench after 33 years of service. Speculation had been rife that the ailing and increasingly frail Rehnquist, 80, might take the occasion of the court's last sitting of the term to [...]

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Ten Commandments can be displayed on the grounds of a state capitol building. The US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had previously ruled in Van Orden v. Perry that a six-foot-tall display of the Commandments on the grounds of the Texas state capitol in Austin was constitutionally [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that developers of software violate federal copyright law when they provide computer users with the ability to share music and movie files downloaded from the internet. Read the Court's opinion . AP has more. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had previously held in MGM [...]

Dennis Rader , charged with 10 murders that took place between 1974 and 1991 as the "bind, torture, kill" (BTK) killer, pleaded guilty on Monday as his trial began in Wichita, Kansas. Prosecutors said before the hearing that no deal had been made. No date was set for sentencing, but Rader cannot face the death [...]

The US Supreme Court has ruled that the Ten Commandments cannot be displayed in courthouses. The US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky that Kentucky counties that had put framed copies of the Ten Commandments in county courthouses and schools were in violation of the Establishment Clause [...]

A Greek prosecutor launched an investigation on Monday to probe possible Greek involvement in the Srebrenica killings in Bosnia in 1995 . Several Bosnian Serbs have already been arrested for their roles. Many of the arrested were members of a paramilitary group alleged to be under the direct control of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic [...]

A Kenyan magistrate on Monday acquitted three men charged with conspiracy in connection with a 2002 suicide bombing at a hotel. The attack, which al-Qaida claimed responsiblity for, killed 15 people . Earlier, four other defendants were acquitted on charges of actually carrying out the bombing. The ruling marks the third high-profile terrorism case in [...]

Over 9 million people are now in prison worldwide and the number is growing, according to a new report by the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies . The statistical survey included convicts and persons held in pre-trial detention. The US, China, and Russia account for about half of the total, with the US holding [...]

Witness to Abuse Human Rights Abuses under the Material Witness Law since September 11, joint report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union , June 26, 2005 . Excerpt: Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, at least seventy men living in the United States—all Muslim but one—have been thrust into a [...]

The US military is planning to expand the current Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca detention facilities in Iraq and build a third major facility in the north of the country to accommodate a growing number of Iraqi prisoners. Military officials say the existing prisons – now holding over 10,000 detainees – are nearing their maximum [...]