The Judicial Conference of the United States , the policy making body for federal judges, and the American Bar Association (ABA) have sent a letter to US Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) opposing proposed legislation that would limit death penalty appeals. The proposed Streamlined Procedures Act , is designed to stop ongoing delays [...]

Texas Judge William L. Abbott ruled Tuesday that former anti-Castro CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles will not be deported to either Cuba or Venezuela where local officials want to prosecute him for alleged terrorist acts. US attorneys agreed that Posada should not be deported to Cuba, where he is accused of making numerous attempts to [...]

Scotland Yard announced Tuesday that anti-terrorist officers have arrested a suspect in connection with the failed July 21 London bomb attacks , which occurred just two weeks after the fatal July 7 London bombings . Four other bombing suspects are in custody and ten other people have been charged with withholding information on other suspected [...]

Rise, Peak, and Decline: Trends in U.S. Immigration 1992-2004, Pew Hispanic Center, September 27, 2005 . Read the full text of the report here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chasehere.

Minority Shiites who make up about about ten percent of Saudi Arabia's population have petitioned King Abdullah for prisoner releases and equal opportunities a month after the new monarch in his first address to the nation pledged to "work for justice and serve all citizens without discrimination" . The Shiites have complained about marginalization by [...]

Wire services are reporting that a military jury at Fort Hood, Texas, has sentenced Pfc. Lynndie England to three years in prison in connection with abuse of Iraq prisoners at Abu Ghraib. She was also given a dishonorable discharge. The sentence was substantially lighter than the nine years she faced under the full range of [...]

An Egyptian court has adjourned the forgery trial of Ayman Nour , the Egyptian opposition leader who was ordered to re-appear in court earlier this week on charges connected to the submission of forged signatures . The Cairo appeals court adjourned the case in response to a defense petition to move the case to another [...]

Antonio Guterres , the new UN High Commissioner for Refugees and former Portuguese prime minister, said Tuesday that international awareness of internal refugee issues was increasing and that countries had started to act to set and fulfil obligations towards them. There are around twenty to twenty-five million internally displaced people (IDPs) worldwide, yet only nine [...]

Pfc. Lynndie England Tuesday apologized for posing for pictures with humiliated Iraqi prisoners, saying that she had been used by her then-boyfriend Spc. Charles Graner . As the sentencing phase of her trial following her Monday conviction on six of seven abuse-related charges got under way at Fort Hood Texas, a military jury of officers [...]

In Tuesday's environmental law news, the European Commission has approved a plan to add international airline flights to the European Union's carbon dioxide (CO2) emission trading scheme (ETS) . The ETS sets an overall cap on CO2 emissions, and participating industries can buy and sell emission allowances as needed. Previously, domestic European flights were included, [...]