California
Jury begins deliberating in Peterson murder trial
Jurors began deliberating the fate of Scott Peterson on Wednesday, more than five months after testimony began in the murder of his wife and her fetus.
Judge Alfred Delucchi sent the panelists off with lunch into the jury room after about 45 minutes of instructions. Jurors must decide whether Peterson killed his pregnant wife and dumped her body in San Francisco Bay, or was merely a straying husband who was framed. He plans to keep the jury sequestered until it reaches a verdict.
In a brief rebuttal to the defense closing arguments, prosecutor Rick Distaso advised jurors not to find reasonable doubt in an unreasonable interpretation of evidence.
Winding up their case earlier in the day, defense lawyers lashed out at the notion that Laci Peterson's fetus died in her womb. Lawyer Mark Geragos reminded jurors that authorities never found the placenta or the fetus' umbilical cord, leaving little evidence to determine whether the male fetus was born alive and killed later.
Egypt
Report: Forces failed to secure Saddam evidence
U.S.-led forces in Iraq failed to safeguard official documents belonging to Saddam Hussein's regime and protect mass graves, a human rights watchdog charged today, saying that could affect the trials of the former Iraqi dictator and his colleagues.
Coalition forces failed to stop people stealing thousands of official documents in the months after the March 2003 invasion, Human Rights Watch says in a report, "Iraq: The State of the Evidence."
The U.S.-led troops also failed to stop people from damaging some of the more than 250 mass graves in their search for the remains of relatives, the report said.
"Coalition forces subsequently failed to put in place the professional expertise and assistance necessary to ensure proper classification and exhumation procedures," said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.
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