Following a statement last week by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahearn that same-sex couples deserved "better rights" (reported here in JURIST's Paper Chase), Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell said Saturday that Ireland should pursue civil partnerships for unwed couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, but should not institute a full process for 'gay marriage'. This was [...]

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga announced Saturday that the government would create a special security force to protect the nation's judges and judicial personnel and would reinstate capital punishment. The announcement came at the end of an emergency session of ministers following Friday's assassination of High Court judge Sarath Ambepitiya and his bodyguard, reported here [...]

Congressional lawmakers announced Saturday that House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on legislation that would overhaul the US intelligence structure pursuant to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The agreement is reported to create a new post that would jointly oversee all civilian spy agencies in the US, including the Central Intelligence Agency; a [...]

Spanish court officials said Saturday that 10 al-Qaida suspects who were previously free on bail have been jailed under a detention order from Judge Baltasar Garzon (BBC profile here) who indicted them in September 2003 for their connection to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US. Garzon has indicted over forty suspects that he [...]

An Afghan court Saturday sentenced Reza Khan to death for the 2001 murder of four foreign journalists. The three-judge panel also found Khan guilty of raping one of the murdered journalists before she died as well as of the murder of his wife in Pakistan. The journalists were traveling from Jalalabad to Kabul when their [...]

S 2986, signed into law by President Bush November 19, 2004 . Read the full text here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Secretary General Kofi Annan admitted Friday that a "small number" of UN civilian and military personnel had committed "gross misconduct" by sexually exploiting refugees in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He expressed outrage at their actions and said the perpetrators must be held accountable. This statement comes after a two year investigation into the incidents [...]

A judge in California has found an 86-year-old man guilty of "sex tourism," specifically traveling to the Philippines to sexually molest girls in violation of a new federal law aimed at protecting children. John W. Seljan was the first to go on trial under the Protect Act (Prosecuting Remedies and Tools Against the Exploitation of [...]

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals issued a ruling Friday denying a rehearing for Bobby Frank Cherry, a former Ku Klux Klansman convicted in 2002 of the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The bomb killed four black girls. The ruling came one day after Cherry died in prison at the [...]

Updating a story reported this morning in JURIST's Paper Chase, a spokesperson for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez claimed Friday that Venezuelan exiles in the US were behind the assassination of a top prosecutor, Danilo Anderson, in a car bomb attack Thursday. Chavez accused the terrorists of training for the execution in Florida and called on [...]