Israel's Supreme Court Monday dismissed an attempt by Jewish settlers to bar legislation enabling the government to accomplish its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The settlers filed eight petitions challenging the Evacuation Compensation bill, ratified in February, which provides government compensation for the 8,500 Israelis who are to be evacuated in an Israeli attempt to [...]

Leading Monday's corporations and securities law news, Coca-Cola Co. has announced that the Justice Department (DOJ) has closed its investigation relating to allegations raised in a whistleblower lawsuit of accounting irregularities at the company. The DOJ will not take any action. The investigation relates to a 2003 lawsuit filed by former Coke manager Matthew Whitley [...]

Following up on a story reported last week in JURIST's Paper Chase, two Houston oil executives pleaded not guilty Monday in a Manhattan federal court to charges of defrauding the UN Oil-For-Food program and paying millions of dollars in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government. David B. Chalmers Jr., owner of Houston-based Bayoil (USA) Inc., [...]

Italian authorities indicted four people on Monday in connection with the death of famed Italian financier Roberto Calvi , known as "God's Banker" due to his close association with the Vatican. Calvi was found hanging under a bridge in London in 1982 after fleeing Italy when one of the country's largest private banks, Banco Ambrosiano, [...]

The US Supreme Court Monday agreed to consider whether a Brazil-based church can continue using a traditional Native American tea brewed from a hallucinogenic herb, hoasca, as a religious sacrament. The case is Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, docket 04-1084. The 10th Circuit held that the Centro Espírita Beneficente União do [...]

One hundred and fifteen Roman Catholic cardinal-electors have begun to take their oaths of secrecy prescribed in the Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis at the start of the papal conclave in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger , dean of the College of Cardinals and himself a leading papal candidate, administered the general oath:We, [...]

US military officials are citing a recent overview of information obtained from Guantanamo detainees as evidence that the military should be able to conduct operations at Camp Delta without intervention from the US court system. The unclassified document , quietly released online last month, highlights the results from some 4,000 interrogation reports and the information [...]

The first post-genocide president in Rwanda , Pasteur Bizimungu , begins his appeal process Monday before the Rwandan Supreme Court to challenge his convictions for inciting civil disobedience, associating with criminals and embezzling public funds. Bizimungu is currently serving a 15 year sentence and has continually denied his guilt. Prosecutors are seeking to have the [...]

Recently elected Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Monday that he would refuse to sign a death conviction for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein if he is convicted of war crimes. During a BBC television interview Talabani, a lawyer, said he was opposed to the death penalty as a matter of principle and said he might [...]

Two convicted killers currently on Kentucky's death row begin a court challenge Monday to the state's use of lethal injection as its form of execution. Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling claim that the use of lethal injection is "cruel and unusual" punishment under the meaning of the Eighth Amendment . Attorneys for the two men [...]