Senior officials from Iraq's political parties have called for a two or three month delay of the country's planned January election, citing ongoing violence. During a one-day summit in Northern Iraq Thursday, Ibrahim al-Janabi, aide to Iraq interim prime minister Iyad Allawi, said it is not likely the security and technical issues surrounding the election [...]

The Venezuelan government is investigating a car bomb that exploded in a suburb of Caracas, killing the driver, believed to be a senior government prosecutor who was investigating opposition groups allegedly involved in a 2002 coup against President Hugo Chavez. The Government of Venezuela website has more in Spanish. Reuters has more in English.

Sudanese government officials and rebel representatives have signed a pledge to end the country's 21-year-old civil war by the end of the year. The pledge follows a concentrated push by the international community to see the resolution of the conflict, including a rare meeting of the UN Security Council in Nairobi (webcast available here) to [...]

Two immigration reform groups filed suit in an Arizona state court Thursday seeking to expand the effect of Proposition 200 , a state ballot initiative approved by voters earlier this month that would deny certain government benefits to undocumented immigrants. The Proposition requires proof of citizenship before someone in Arizona can vote or receive public [...]

The United Nations ended a long-running debate Thursday by deciding not to draft a treaty that would ban all human cloning. President Bush, along with Costa Rica, supported the total ban, while other countries have been pushing for a treaty that would allow cloning for research purposes, including stem cell research. The two sides were [...]

Here's a run-down of law-related events, expected developments and live webcasts on JURIST's docket for Friday, November 19. On Capitol Hill, the US House will meet at 9 AM ET. Watch a live webcast (via C-SPAN)…. The US Senate will meet at 9:30 AM ET and will resume consideration of the conference report to accompany [...]

Final Report of the Special Master for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, United States Department of Justice, November 18, 2004. Excerpt: The Fund provided generously for those directly affected by the attack. In total, the Fund distributed over $7.049 billion to survivors of 2,880 persons killed in the September 11th attacks 1 [...]

A jury found former South Carolina lieutenant governor Earle Morris guilty of 22 counts of securities fraud Thursday. While Morris was chairman of Carolina Investors he told investors to keep their money with the company even though he knew it was going under. Carolina Investors subsequently went through the largest bankruptcy in South Carolina history [...]

US Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters said Thursday during an intellectual property conference at the John Marshall School of Law that Congress would not enact the Inducing Infringement Copyrights Act , also known as the Induce Act, before the Thanksgiving holiday. The Act is Congress’ attempt at confronting peer-to-peer networks filled with pirated music, movies [...]

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have unanimously chosen Senator Arlen Specter to be chairman next year. Specter's chairmanship had been in doubt after the GOP moderate warned Bush against nominations based solely on a judge's conservatism or opposition to abortion rights, suggesting that confirmation of such nominees would be difficult. Specter has now promised [...]