An attempt by a special prosecutor to try former Mexican president Luis Echeverria on genocide charges for the massacre of hundreds of students during a 1968 demonstration was rejected by Wednesday by the Mexican Supreme Court . The high court refused to hear an appeal from a judge's decision not to issue an arrest warrant [...]

US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton and representatives from other UN member countries resumed negotiations Wednesday on the creation of a new UN rights watchdog to replace the Human Rights Commission . At the closed door meeting, Bolton presented several proposals and cautioned that allowing countries who commit human rights abuses to serve on [...]

Transcript of Day 3 of confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito, Jr., nominated to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, US Senate Judiciary Committee, January 11, 2006. Read the full text transcript as provided to AP by CQ Transcriptions, LLC .

Electoral results released by the Independent Electoral Commission in the Democratic Republic of Congo Wednesday certify the landslide approval of the new Congolese constitution . In December, 84 percent of the approximately 15 million voters who cast their ballots voted to grant greater autonomy to mineral-rich provinces, lower the minimum age to become president from [...]

Mehmet Ali Agca , a Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from a Turkish prison Thursday to cheers from a crowd of nationalist supporters. After serving 20 years in an Italian jail, Agca was extradited to Turkey to serve five additional years in prison for the previous murder of [...]

Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee and Canadian citizen Omar Khadr on Wednesday asked the judge presiding over Khadr's military trial to delay proceedings so that Khadr could secure counsel with more trial experience. Khadr, 19, faces charges of conspiracy, murder and attempted murder stemming from a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan outside an al Qaeda compound, [...]

A German court sentenced Iraqi Lokman Amin Mohammed to seven years in prison Thursday for recruiting fighters and raising money to support the insurgency in Iraq. Prosecutors say Mohammed played a key role in the Western Europe branch of insurgent group Ansar al-Islam , smuggling wounded Iraqi fighters into Europe for medical treatment. Mohammed is [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Sherrilyn Ifill of the University of Maryland School of Law says that on the third day of Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito his student membership in a conservative Princeton organization took center stage as emotions ran high and tempers flared… Day 3 may have been about as dramatic as [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Wendy J. Keefer, former senior counsel and chief of staff in the US Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy and now with Bancroft Associates in Washington DC, says that Judge Samuel Alito's steadfast performance on the fourth day of his Senate hearings and the testimony of other witnesses, including a [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Stephen Gilles of Quinnipiac University School of Law says that after a third day of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, US Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito seems to be on his way towards confirmation given his performance thusfar, the current balance in the Senate and the fact that he's replacing Justice Sandra [...]