The US government will not pursue the death penalty against US Marine Corps Pfc. John Jodka III in the death of an Iraqi civilian in Hamdania, according to a military prosecutor during Article 32 hearings Wednesday to determine if Jodka and another soldier should face courts-martial for the killing. Jodka is accused of firing deadly [...]

The body of missing Tikrit judge Turky al-Dulaimi has been found by Iraqi police near Baghdad, according to a police source speaking on the condition of anonymity Thursday. Dulaimi disappeared four days ago after being transferred from a court in Tikrit to one in Abu Ghraib. The source said Dulaimi was found on a street [...]

President Bush announced on Wednesday the nominations of five people to serve as federal appeals court judges on the US Courts of Appeals for the Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits. The nomination of the five conservatives has already caused concern among Senate leaders with a spokesman for Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid labeling the announcement [...]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday once again said that Iran will not cease its uranium enrichment program, despite an August 31 deadline set by UN Security Council Resolution 1696 , stating that "the Iranian nation will not accept for one moment any bullying, invasion and violation of its rights." Non-compliance with the deadline may [...]

The South African National Assembly , the lower house of the country's parliament, has passed the Prohibition of Mercenary Activity and Regulation of Certain Activities in Areas of Armed Conflict Bill , legislation that would prevent South African citizens from serving in foreign armies or security forces abroad without first receiving permission from the South [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Brian Concannon Jr., Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, says that although the political prisoners lingering in Haiti's squalid jails are not the byproduct of the policies of incoming President René Préval, they are certainly his problem, drawing criticism with each passing day not only from international [...]

In re: Vioxx Products Liability Litigation, Barnett v. Merck & Co., US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, August 30, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Scotland Yard received a final one-week extension from a High Court judge in London Wednesday, permitting British police to detain and question five British Muslim men suspected in connection with an alleged terror plot to blow up US-bound planes over the Atlantic for an additional seven days before they must either charge the suspects with [...]

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland condemned Israel Wednesday for its "immoral" use of cluster bombs in the most recent Middle East conflict . Egeland based his criticism on UN officials' recent discovery of 359 separate sites of cluster bomblets, saying that 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours [...]

National Resources Defense Council v. Environmental Protection Agency et al., United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, August 29, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.