With the jury still unable to reach a verdict and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy unwilling to cut a deal in his trial for accounting fraud, US District Judge Karon Bowdre summoned lawyers from both sides for a closed-door meeting Wednesday. Jurors earlier resumed deliberating after a two-day break, caused by one juror's undisclosed emergency [...]

Diplomats from various Western nations have been permitted to examine conditions at Ethiopia's largest jail for the hundreds of protestors arrested after the disputed May 15 election erupted into demonstrations and violence . Officials from Ireland, Switzerland and the US visited the facilities Wednesday and a statement from the Irish Embassy said conditions at the [...]

A Sunni spokesman said Wednesday that a list of names submitted for the fifteen full committee seats on the drafting committee for the new Iraqi constitution had been approved by the Shi'ite and Kurd politicians, despite earlier reports that the appointments had hit a snag when they were not properly endorsed by a larger Sunni [...]

A member of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party said in a speech Wednesday that the International Military Tribunal for the Far East established after World War II may have unjustly tried and convicted Japanese war criminals. Lawmaker Masahiro Morioka previously enraged Japan's neighbours which suffered destruction and Japanese occupation in the conflict when he made [...]

The first ten men to be tried in Sudan for atrocities committed in the volatile Darfur region all pleaded not guilty Tuesday. The men, associated with the government-allied political group called the Popular Defense Forces, face charges of rape and robbery. The trials commenced last Saturday in a Sudanese special court after the government refused [...]

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that Russia would be unable to submit an amended border treaty with Estonia to the Russian parliament because amendments inserted by Estonia were an "unambiguously negative assessment in Russian society" . The changes made include indirect references to the Soviet-era occupation of the Baltic states, although Russia maintains that [...]

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction told a House subcommittee hearing focused on the US handling of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) on Tuesday that evidence relating to finances used for reconstruction has been handed over to the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Stuart Bowen Jr. said the evidence points [...]

A lawyer for the first Kuwaiti inmate to be freed from the Guantanamo Bay detention center argued before a Kuwait City tribunal Wednesday that his client should not be tried in Kuwaiti court and complained he was only given a summary of US interrogations. Nasser al-Mutairi was detained in Afghanistan in 2001 and freed after [...]

Jassim al-Issawi, a Sunni Muslim Iraqi judge whose name was at one point on the list to serve on a parliamentary committee to draft Iraq's new constitution was killed by gunmen in Baghdad on Wednesday. Al-Issawi, who was later dropped from the committee, also served as a law professor at Baghdad University and was the [...]

Eight men accused of recruiting people to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq have been jailed in Spain following several days of questioning, officials of the National Court announced Tuesday. Spanish Judge Fernando Grande-Malarska freed 3 other men, who were also part of the group arrested last week, suspected of being members of al-Qaida in [...]