Citing stabilization brought about by pro-Moscow Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Russian authorities announced they are ending the decade-long "counter-terrorism operation" in Chechnya. Russia boasts that violence and terrorism in the southern Muslim republic have been put down—but sporadic violence persists, and human rights groups have accused Kadyrov of using militias to commit widespread abuses against the Chechen people.

The Somali parliament voted April 18 to adopt Islamic sharia law. A parliamentary spokesperson said that more than 300 Somali MPs voted for the implementation of sharia as part of an attempt by Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to bring stability to the "failed state." Last month, Ahmed announced that he would support the imposition of a moderate form of sharia as part of a cease-fire agreement with the country's Hizb al-Islamiya and al-Shabaab rebels.

Greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare, the US Environmental Protection Agency found April 17, under a scientific review ordered in 2007 by the Supreme Court. The proposed finding states: "In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act."

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit vacated April 17 the Bush-era program for leasing of land for oil and gas drilling on the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) along the Alaskan coast. The court held that the Department of Interior had not carried out an environmental sensitivity study in accordance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) when it ranked the sensitivity of various program areas in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas only in terms of the physical characteristics of the shoreline of those areas.

The Revolutionary Court of Iran convicted US journalist Roxana Saberi of espionage, sentencing her to eight years in prison, according to her lawyer April 18. The trial, in which Saberi was accused of passing classified information to US intelligence agencies, was conducted earlier this week in proceedings closed to the public, and news of her conviction came from press contact with Saberi's father and her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi.

The New England Journal of Medicine is releasing a new study by the University of London based on data from Iraq Body Count, finding that sectarian militias were responsible for a full third of killings in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. The finding that 33% of civilian deaths since the US-led invasion are attributable to armed gangs contradicts previous assertions by the Iraqi government that foreign military operations were responsible for the majority of deaths.

US President Barack Obama April 16 issued a statement asserting his intention not to investigate individuals who used or authorized "enhanced interrogation techniques"—the same day the Department of Justice released memos outlining CIA use of these techniques. The president urged the country to look forward, rather than to the past, saying:

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled April 17 that former Israeli security chief Avraham Dichter cannot be sued in the US because he is immune under traditional common law. The decision affirms the ruling of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Dichter faced suit by survivors of a 2002 Israeli bombing, the target of which was alleged Hamas leader Saleh Mustafah Shehadeh. Shehadeh was killed along with his wife and nine children when a bomb detonated in a densely populated section of Gaza City. Human rights groups have widely called the attack a war crime. (Jurist, April 17)