The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted to approve the nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be secretary of state. The nomination now goes for the full Senate for its formal approval.

A US general speaking from Baghdad Tuesday said that Iraqis would be able to vote in the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi , both scenes of repeated insurgent attacks against Iraqi and US targets, but that for security reasons the location of polling places would be kept secret until the last minute. Lieutenant General John [...]

In Wednesday's international legal news, Viktor Yushchenko , the pro-western reformer who led a popular charge to see the original November Ukranian presidential election results reversed on grounds of fraud, will most likely be inaugurated as the new president of Ukraine on Friday or Saturday of this week. The key break in the face-off between [...]

California prison officials executed three-time murderer Donald Beardslee Wednesday morning, the first execution in California in three years. Following a Board of Prison Terms recommendation , California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Beardslee, saying: The state and federal courts have affirmed his conviction and death sentence, and nothing in his petition or the record [...]

A British court martial has released over twenty pictures that seem to show British troops abusing Iraqi civilians. The photos emerged as three Royal Regiment of Fusiliers soldiers are facing nine charges for allegedly abusing looters detained at a camp outside Basra in May 2003. Responding to the photos , head of the British Army [...]

Here's a run-down of law-related events, expected developments and live webcasts on JURIST's docket for Wednesday, Jan. 19. The US Supreme Court will hear 10 AM ET oral arguments in City of Ranchos Palos Verdes v. Abrams , in which it will resolve a circuit split over whether limits on land-use authority under the federal [...]

Updating a JURIST report from earlier today on new security regulations for the upcoming January 30 elections in Iraq, Iraqi party sources said Tuesday that gunmen had killed two candidates of Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's political coalition in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Monday. Alaa Hamid was running for election to the [...]

US Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales told senators Tuesday that any torture by US forces would be illegal and that he supported reinstating a federal assault weapons ban that was allowed to lapse in September. Gonzales also said certain sunset provisions in the USA Patriot Act should be eliminated and that the act, which he [...]

The US Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in Rompilla v. Beard , 04-5462 , a PA case that involves jury instructions for cases involving the death penalty. Rompilla, who was convicted of robbing, stabbing and setting on fire a bar owner in Allentown, PA, in 1988, argues his death sentence should be overturned because jurors [...]

The trial against defrocked priest Paul Shanley began Tuesday, with Shanley facing rape and assault and battery charges. The prosecution formally dropped another accuser from the case, however, leaving only one accuser as the trial proceeds. The third accuser was dropped from the case after prosecutors could not locate him since an October hearing in [...]