Brazil, the country with the world's highest death rate from firearms , Sunday firmly rejected a ban on gun and ammunition sales in its first national referendum. Initial pre-referendum surveys had indicated a favorable view of the ban, but an anti-ban advertising blitz in the run-up to the vote appears to have turned the tide. [...]

The New York Times reported Sunday that federal prosecutors reviewing the involvement of CIA officials in the deaths of at least four prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan have decided not to bring criminal charges against all but one CIA employee. The US Justice Department believes the US military bears most of the blame for prisoner [...]

Officials and community advocates in New Orleans have proposed using the Roman law concept of usufruct to allow authorities to gain temporary control of privately owned homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina . Coming into Louisiana state law via the French and Spanish civil code traditions, usufruct gives a party the temporary legal right to use [...]

Partial results of the referendum on the draft Iraqi constitution, Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq press briefing, October 22, 2005. Read the full text of the transcript via MNF-Iraq. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Lebanese authorities said Saturday that they have apprehended a man who called President Emile Lahoud shortly before the February 4 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri . Lebanon Public Prosecutor Saeed Meerza issued a warrant for the arrest of Mahmoud Abdel-Al based on the UN report on Hariri's assassination. The report also names [...]

The UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Sudan said Saturday that the Sudanese government has failed to try persons responsible for war crimes in Darfur . Dr. Sima Samar said that organized sexual violence against women is continuing and the government is doing nothing to prevent it. He also reported that emergency laws in [...]

Lawyers for Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants announced Saturday that they would boycott their trial unless the court was moved outside of Iraq for their own safety. The statement comes after Saadoun Sughaiyer al-Janabi, a defense lawyer accused Saddam chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar, was kidnapped and murdered late last week. The defense team has [...]

Iraqi election officials Saturday announced partial results of the country's October 15 constitutional referendum that pointed towards approval of the draft charter in the final count. Figures based on half the returns in 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces suggested that the document had been approved there by majorities of between 51 and 98 percent; in [...]

White House US Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers supported affirmative action programs during her tenure as the president of the State Bar of Texas, according to a report in the Washington Post Saturday. The Post cited an interview Miers gave in June 1992 to the the Texas Bar Journal, as well as a President's Opinion [...]

Amnesty International said Saturday that Sudan has arrested and mistreated a human rights lawyer documenting the killing of 30 people in refugee camps outside of Khartoum last May. Amnesty considers the lawyer to be a prisoner of conscience, “detained solely for his work in defense of human rights.” The Sudanese government has denied firing upon [...]