A appeals hearing for Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was delayed again Thursday after his lawyer asked for more time to prepare, saying he had been unable to meet with Khodorkovsky in prison before Thursday's hearing. Hearings in Khodorkovsky's appeal of his conviction for fraud and tax evasion had previously been rescheduled because his main [...]

France, Germany and Great Britain, the EU's three major powers, have decided to drop their support for a US-backed draft resolution calling on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to report Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council , according to statements from diplomats Thursday. The countries opted to discontinue their support after resistance [...]

After months of absolute rule by King Gyanendra , Nepal will move forward with local elections by April 2006 and national elections within two years, Nepalese Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. The announcement was the first clear signal by Nepal's government as to when it plans to hold [...]

A Mexican judge on Wednesday refused to issue an arrest warrant for former President Luis Echeverria and seven other officials for a 1968 massacre of student protesters, ending a second attempt by prosecutors to bring the former leaders to trial. Judge Ranulfo Castillo held that the statute of limitations for genocide had run with respect [...]

Christian leaders in Iraq have warned officials that the draft constitution "opens the door widely" to discrimination of religious minorities in the country. Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of the Chaldeans met with the Iraqi president and prime minister earlier this week and said that certain parts of the draft constitution were contradictory. In particular, Delly [...]

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina , local law enforcement and federal agents have expressed increasing concern over the damage the storm wreaked on the New Orleans justice system and how quickly it can recover. Among the larger problems faced by the city is the possible loss of evidence in some 3,000 criminal cases that [...]

Expressing concern over the condition of Guantanamo Bay detainees participating in a hunger strike, attorneys for some of the detainees have told District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that the detainees are in worse condition than the military has admitted and asked the judge to oversee the military's management of the hunger strike. Attorneys Tom Wilner and [...]

Al Barakaat International Foundation v. Council of the European Union, et al., European Court of First Instance, September 21, 2005 . Read the full text of the opinion here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday called on nations to quickly sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as he opened the fourth conference on bringing the treaty into force. Annan said countries' inability to agree on the issue was a "significant failure" that the world should be "gravely concerned about." A [...]

A grand jury in Philadelphia on Wednesday issued a 418-page report severely criticizing the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for alleged cover-ups of widespread clergy abuses in the Archdiocese over the course of decades, but handed down no charges due to statute of limitations applying in most cases. The grand jury, convened in 2003, concluded that at [...]