Malawi Vice President Cassim Chilumpha pleaded not guilty to treason and conspiring to murder the president as his trial on the charges began Monday. In May 2006, Chilumpha was placed under house arrest three weeks after police arrested him in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika . Chilumpha says [...]

The Nepalese government has created a panel to assemble a list of assets held by King Gyanendra and seize property he obtained after ascending to the throne, a cabinet spokesman said Monday. Dilendra Prasad Badu said the three-member panel is tasked with detailing the king's assets and recommending a plan to nationalize the property and [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, says that the recent ruling by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on habeas-stripping under the Military Commissions Act was erroneous and is likely to be overturned by the US Supreme Court… Last week, in Boumediene v. Bush, [...]

A California state appeals court ruled Monday that the state's stem cell research program "suffers from no constitutional or other legal infirmity," leading the way for approximately $3 billion in grant money to be awarded to researchers. The Court of Appeal of the State of California First District upheld last year's lower court decision upholding [...]

A federal judge Monday refused to apply a 1851 maritime law that would have limited the possible damages for victims of the 2003 Staten Island ferry crash to $14.4 million. The city of New York argued that the law, which was written to encourage investments in shipbuilding, should be applied to limit the ship owner's [...]

Othman and Secretary of State for the Home Department, Special Immigration Appeals Commission, February 26, 2007 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The governors of five western US states signed an agreement Monday to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases , a cause of global warming . During the winter meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA) , the governors of Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to establish the Western [...]

His Excellency Nabi Sensoy, Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey : "House Resolution 106 on Armenian genocide allegations was introduced by five Representatives on January 30, 2007 at the 110th Congress 1st Session. The phrasing of the resolution implies acceptance, as an established fact, of the existence of the 'genocide' and its scale, a matter [...]

Two high-ranking Kurdish politicians were each sentenced to a year and a half in prison Monday by a Turkish court for distributing Kurdish-language party materials praising imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan . Ahmet Turk and Aysel Tugluk, president and vice-president of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) , received one year sentences for distributing [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in Scott v. Harris , 05-1631 , where the court must decide whether a police officer violated a fleeing suspect's constitutional rights by using deadly force when he bumped his police car into the suspect's car to end a high speed chase. Victor Harris was pursued by [...]