A Sri Lanka government official said Monday that his government had set aside ordinary legal formalities to facilitate rapid burial of the thousands of victims of Sunday's tsunami that killed more than 10,000 in Sri Lanka alone, according to preliminary figures, and over 23,000 in the region. The tidal wave, which has killed people as [...]

A Jordanian military court has acquitted 13 Muslim militants of conspiring to commit terrorist attacks against US interests in Jordan, including the US Embassy in Amman and Jordanian military bases where US troops were believed to be stationed. The attacks were never carried out and the suspects were arrested in December 2002. Eleven of the [...]

With more than 98% of Sunday's vote counted, Ukrainian election officials have announced that opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has an undefeatable lead of 52% in the country's third presidential election since October 31. Yushchenko thanked his supporters and called on them to take to the streets to defend his victory. Yushchenko's challenger, Prime Minister Viktor [...]

In a gesture of goodwill to the new Palestinian leadership, Israel Monday released 159 Palestinian prisoners. Interim Palestinian leader and presidential frontrunner Mahmoud Abbas (official website here; BBC profile here) has campaigned on the prisoner release issue and has called for more of the 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails to be set free, especially those [...]

The Washington Post reported Sunday that claims of abuse and torture made by 10 former Guantanamo detainees and described in documents filed in federal court now appear to be substantiated by FBI documents recently obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. Both the detainee complaints and the FBI papers (the release of [...]

Ukraine's Supreme Court has voided as unconstitutional part of the electoral reform package approved earlier this month by the Ukrainian parliament, just one day before the country re-runs its presidential election, the results of which were voided by the high court on grounds of fraud. This time the court struck down a provision limiting voting [...]

In a major course-reversal, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (official website here), now a candidate for state governor in 2006, has said that he is ready to turn high-profile investigations of wrongdoing by investment banks, mutual funds and insurance companies over to federal regulators, suggesting that state-led crusades balkanize corporate regulation, and that federal [...]

The French newspaper Liberation said Friday that an unpublished UN report it has obtained catalogues a plethora of major rights abuses in the conflict-wracked African state of Cote d'Ivoire over the past two years, including mass execution, torture and rape of women and children. The report says that many offenses were filmed by French and [...]

NATO troops Friday arrested former Bosnian Serb policeman Dusan Tesic for allegedly assisting suspected war crimes fugitives. NATO believes Tesic has information on a network that helps fugitives evade the law. NATO did not release the names of those Tesic is believed to have aided; he was previously detained for questioning regarding Bosnian-Serb leaders Radovan [...]

Puerto Rican election authorities have announced Anibal Acevedo Vila, the Popular Democratic Party's candidate, as the country's new governor following a recount of the November 2nd election. The election results are expected to be officially certified on Tuesday. Acevedo Villa won by 3,228 votes from the nation's 4 million residents. As reported previously in JURIST's [...]