China's National People's Congress voted Tuesday to amend the Organic Law on the People's Courts so that only the Supreme People's Court has the authority to approve the death penalty . The high court's president first hinted at death penalty reform last year and later the court said it would begin reviewing all death penalty [...]

Advocacy groups filed a second lawsuit Monday against the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania in an attempt to block the community's anti-immigration laws that will make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to reside or work in the town. The city's Illegal Immigration Relief Act and Landlord Tenant Ordinance , set to take effect Wednesday , [...]

A federal jury Monday returned a $48 million verdict against Amerigroup and its Illinois affiliate for discriminating against pregnant women by intentionally not reaching out to them while marketing its insurance services in Illinois. The lawsuit was based on allegations made by whistleblower Cleveland Tyson, who was fired from the company in 2002 and will [...]

Failure to Protect: A Call to the UN Security Council to Act in North Korea, US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, October 30, 2006 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, October 30, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A US Navy spokesman said Monday that an Article 32 hearing scheduled for Tuesday in the case of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz, a staff attorney with the US Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps accused of leaking detainee names while stationed at Guantanamo Bay , has been postponed and has not yet been rescheduled. Diaz [...]

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud voiced objections to a draft document governing the special tribunal to be tasked with trying suspects in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in a 32-page report released Monday. Lahoud balked at his exclusion from the organization of the tribunal under UN auspices since the Lebanese [...]

US special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald argued in court papers filed Monday with the US District Court for the District of Columbia that he should not be required to explain to jurors in the case of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby why no one has been indicted for actually leaking the identity of CIA [...]

A Beijing court has denied an appeal hearing for Ching Cheong , who was convicted in August on charges of spying for Taiwan. Ching, the chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times , was sentenced to five years in jail by a Chinese court in August after being convicted of selling state secrets . While [...]

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin promised Monday to extend the scope of anti-vandalism laws following the burnings of some 200 vehicles over the weekend. After an emergency meeting on transportation security, de Villepin said the laws should be modified to punish not only the perpetrators of such attacks, but also those who are "involved [...]