Opposition political parties in Nepal on Tuesday formally ended several weeks of pro-democracy protests after King Gyanendra ordered the reinstatement of parliament on Monday. Leaders from the seven-party opposition alliance said that they wanted Nepali Congress leader Girija Prasad Koirala, a former prime minister, to head the new government. The Nepal House of Representatives is [...]

The chief military prosecutor for Guantanamo Bay , USAF Col. Morris Davis , Monday announced plans to charge an additional two dozen Guantanamo detainees and to seek the death penalty against several. Three of the 10 detainees originally charged are in the midst of pre-trial hearings which resume this week . One, Algerian Sufyian Barhoumi [...]

DC sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad agreed Monday to allow three attorneys to stand by and provide advice upon request when he begins representing himself at his trial , set to begin May 1. Maryland Judge James L. Ryan granted the defendant's request to represent himself last month despite protestation from Muhammad's court-appointed attorneys that [...]

Former president of Liberia Charles Taylor is being requested to testify at the trial of a Dutch timber trader indicted for facilitating the import of weapons to Liberia in exchange for timber, a violation of a UN arms embargo. Dutch prosecutors assert that while heading timber companies in Liberia, Guus Van Kouwenhoven established a close [...]

Thomas Cook et al. v. Donald H. Rumsfeld et al., United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Judge George A. O'Toole Jr., April 24, 2006 . Read the full text of the lawsuit . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Royal proclamation to the nation from King Gyanendra of Nepal, April 24, 2006 . English-language translation from eKantipur.com: Beloved Countrymen, Convinced that the source of State Authority and Sovereignty of the Kingdom of Nepal is inherent in the people of Nepal and cognizant of the spirit of the ongoing people's movement as well as to [...]

Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, April 24, 2006 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Legal arguments began in Colchester, England, Monday in the court-martrial trial of four British soldiers accused of killing an Iraqi prisoner in the southern Iraqi city of Basra in May 2003. The four soldiers are accused of forcing Ahmed Kareem, one of four Iraqi prisoners captured on suspicion of looting, into a canal where he [...]

Text of a letter on the "nuclear option" to President George W. Bush from thirteen leading US physicists, including five Nobel Laureates, April 17, 2006 . Excerpt: Using or even merely threatening to use a nuclear weapon preemptively against a nonnuclear adversary tells the 182 non-nuclear-weapon countries signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that their [...]

President Bush Monday rejected the option of deportation for the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the US, asking Congress to keep in mind “that we are talking about human beings, decent human beings” as it prepared to take up the immigration reform issue again after a two week recess. In a speech to the [...]