A high court judge in Sri Lanka and his bodyguard were shot and killed Friday by an unknown gunman. The judge, Sarath Ambepitiya, was returning to his home when he was shot, but a motive was not yet clear for the killing. Ambepitiya was known for issuing long sentences, including a 200-year jail sentence issued [...]

Doug Berman, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University: "It's perhaps a sober reminder of the realities of criminal justice that President Bush's ceremonial pardoning of turkeys received a lot more press than his actual pardoning of people.  (As an aside, I cannot help but wonder if Alberto Gonzales wrote clemency memos for Biscuits and [...]

The US Navy has announced that on Monday an unnamed SEAL lieutenant will face an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury, on charges that his abuse of an Iraqi prisoner lead to the prisoner's death. The prisoner, Manadel al-Jamadi, was captured and held at Abu Ghraib prison when the alleged abuse [...]

The US Supreme Court has stayed the execution of a Texas man for the second time in five months. Troy Kunkle was convicted of murder for the 1984 killing of man during an armed robbery. Prior to his scheduled execution in July of 2004, citizens opposed to Kunkle's execution started a petition to stay his [...]

Egyptian officials have requested the release of five Egyptian Guantanamo Bay prisoners after the US government placed them in the "least dangerous" category of detention. The US State Department says it will soon explain the procedures for release to the Egyptian government. This is the first time Egypt has sought release of its citizens being [...]

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 [...]