The Kyrgyz prosecutor general's office said Thursday that Kyrgyzstan plans to deport a group of 29 Uzbek asylum seekers despite UN denunciation of four earlier deportations over the possibility that the returned individuals may face torture in Uzbekistan. A top Kyrgyz prosecutor referred to the refugees as "criminals" and said "they need to be punished, [...]

A group of 50 Sunni Muslim religious, political, and tribal leaders Thursday endorsed a list of 15 men to sit on a special committee to help draft Iraq's new constitution . The announcement ends any debate over whether improperly endorsed appointments should be deemed invalid. The 15 men, whose appointment was anticipated by a Sunni [...]

The US Food and Drug Administration has warned Texas Governor Rick Perry that a law he signed requiring the Texas State Board of Pharmacy to provide information about Canadian pharmacies may violate federal law . The agency would inspect up to 10 Canadian pharmacies and allow consumers to decide which ones were safe options to [...]

Military interrogators at Guantanamo had access to detainees' medical records until early 2003 and possibly later, and exploited information from the records during questioning, according to a new article in the New England Journal of Medicine . The authors, Gregg Bloche of Georgetown University law school and Jonathan Marksof of London's Matrix Chambers, known for [...]

Following the March Supreme Court ruling that juveniles may not be sentenced to death, Texas Governor Rick Perry has commuted the sentences of 28 offenders to life in prison. They will be eligible for parole after 40 years. Twelve other US states have juveniles on death row . The Houston Chronicle has local coverage.

Iraqi deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi said on Thursday that the trial of Saddam Hussein will begin within 90 days, before the end of September 2005. The government had previously stated that they wanted the trial to begin before the constitutional referendum scheduled for October 15. On Tuesday, Iraq's justice minister accused the US of [...]

ABC News is reporting that ex-KKK member Edgar Ray Killen , now 80, has been sentenced to the maximum 60 years in prison for manslaughter in connection with the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. Killen was found to have organized a group to kidnap, assault, and shoot the three young men. He was [...]

The Tokyo High Court overturned a 2001 Tokyo District Court ruling on Thursday that awarded compensation to the family of a Chinese man who was forcibly brought to Japan as a laborer during World War II. The lower court originally ordered compensation not for labor but because the man hid in the mountains of Hokkaido [...]

Following the Supreme Court's early June decision that Congress can criminalize the use of marijuana with a doctor's permission , federal agents executed search warrants and made arrests on Wednesday in raids on medical marijuana providers in northern California. Almost 25 different locations were searched, and in Sacramento a doctor and her husband were arrested [...]

The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday in Kelo v. New London that a local government authority can expropriate private property – land, homes and businesses – for private redevelopment that confers economic benefits on the community such as more jobs and tax revenue so long as it is not just a private use of [...]