A US military judge Saturday ordered Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, formerly in charge of US prisons in Iraq, to testify in the upcoming prisoner abuse trial of Sgt. Javal Davis. Davis has admitted to stepping on prisoners' fingers and toes, but says that the conduct was tacitly permitted by military intelligence. Karpinski's testimony at trial [...]

German authorities Saturday arrested a fourth man in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Iraqi interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi during his visit to Germany. None of the names of the individuals arrested have been released, although the fourth man is reported to have Libyan citizenship. A judge has ordered the continued detention of [...]

The Ukrainian Parliament Saturday failed to pass an electoral reform package aimed at preventing fraud in the country's upcoming re-run of the presidential election, now scheduled for December 26. The bills had prevously been agreed to in a political deal by opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko and a significant portion of the smaller parties, including the [...]

Serbian officials held an emergency cabinet session Saturday to petition UN Administrator for the Kosovo region Soren Jessen-Petersen to annul the recent election results that put Ramush Haradinaj in the office of Kosovar Prime Minister. Haradinaj has been accused of committing war crimes during the Bosnian conflict, where he led a rebel Albanian military group. [...]

London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens said in an interview Saturday that he believed the current UK laws addressing the rights of home owners to defend themselves against intruders needed reform. To avoid liability, the current law requires the homeowner to prove that the force used in resisting an intruder has to be 'reasonable' [...]

Cobell et al. v. Norton, Secretary of the Interior et al., US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, December 3, 2004 . Excerpt: The district court could not resolve the state of Interior's IT systems security without conducting a hearing on the evidence in dispute.In opposition to the plaintiffs' motion for injunctive relief [...]

Columbia's most notorious drug trafficker, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuelo, was flown to the US early Saturday to face trial in federal court on charges of smuggling cocaine and money laundering. As head of the Cali cartel, Orejuelo and his brother Miguel controlled nearly 80 percent of the world's cocaine trade, earning $8 billion annually. While serving [...]

A majority of the Senate has voted in favor of the Sept. 11 intelligence bill, although AP is reporting that the vote is not over yet.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled Friday that the US Interior Department does not have to disconnect its computers from the Internet despite the possibility of tampering by hackers. The dispute arose regarding the security of a US Interior Department website that contains information about royalty payments owed to American [...]

Signed into law by President Bush December 3, 2004 . Read the full text of the Act here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.