The Illinois House and Senate sent a bill to Governor Rod Blagojevich early Tuesday seeking to lower doctors' medical malpractice insurance rates by capping medical malpractice damage awards. SB 475 passed the House 68-46 and the Senate 36-22 and would limits victims' pain and suffering damages to $500,000 from individual doctors and $1 million from [...]

China Tuesday publicly accused Ching Cheong, chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper , of spying for "foreign agencies". According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry , "Ching admitted that in recent years he engaged in intelligence-gathering activities on the mainland on instructions from foreign intelligence agencies and accepted huge amounts of spying fees." Ching [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Dr. Laurent Pech, Jean Monnet Lecturer in European Union Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a native of Aix-en-Provence who returned to France to vote in its referendum on the European Constitution, says that French rejection of the charter was based on several legal and political factors, and presents [...]

French President Jacques Chirac has accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin just two days after French voters turned down the proposed European constituton in a referendum that was seen by many as a rejection of the current government. Raffarin, who in a TV address insisted that he took the decision on other grounds, [...]

The BBC is reporting that on the twelfth day of verdict-reading, a Moscow court has sentenced Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky , former CEO of Russian oil company Yukos, to nine years in jail after being formally found guilty of charges including fraud and tax evasion at the end of a trial regarded by many [...]

Despite France's rejection of the EU constitution in Sunday's national referendum , EU leaders are calling on the 15 European nations that have not yet made a decision on the Constitution to continue with whatever decision-making process was chosen for their nation. The next constitutional referendum is scheduled for the Netherlands on 1 June and [...]

Former Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and former Interior Minister Prakashman Singh said Monday they would bring the Royal Commission for Corruption Control before the Nepalese Supreme Court for pursuing an investigation of the two former government officials for political reasons. Dueba and Singh have been detained for the past month on charges of [...]

The Associated Press reported Monday that a new batch of documents received by the press agency under a Freedom of Information Act suit describe multiple allegations of abuse of Guantanamo prisoners by US personnel and inaction by US military tribunals when abuses were reported to them. In court papers detainees described physical, emotional, and mental [...]

The State Crimes Prosecutor for Sudan has ordered the arrest of Paul Foreman, the head of the Dutch wing of Medecins San Frontieres who published a report in March entitled The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur which alleged mass rape on the part of the Janjaweed militias, which are reportedly controlled by [...]

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud criticized Lebanon's current electoral law Monday, saying that voter turnout of less than 27% in the first stage of parliamentary elections over the weekend was a clear demonstration of the Lebanese people were unhappy with existing electoral system. The present law allows local and national political figures to form alliances ahead [...]