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BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen on Wednesday killed a former judge whose name once was on a list of Sunni Arabs joining a parliamentary committee to draft Iraq's new constitution, officials said. Separately, a Filipino hostage was released after almost eight months in captivity. Former judge Jassim al-Issawi, whose candidacy to join the 55-member committee was later dropped, was a law professor at Baghdad University and the former editor-in-chief of Al-Siyadah newspaper, said Salih al-Mutlak, secretary general of the Sunni National Dialogue Council Al-Issawi, 51, and his son were killed in Baghdad's northwestern Shula neighborhood, said Abdul Sattar Jawad, current editor...

SANTA PAULA, Calif. (AP) - Former Superior Court Judge Robert Bradley, whose highly publicized battle with alcoholism and drunken driving arrests led to his downfall, choked to death on food at his home. He was 64. The ex-Ventura County judge was taken from his Santa Paula residence Monday night to the emergency room at Ventura County Medical Center after a housekeeper found him collapsed in the kitchen, authorities said. He was declared dead at 9:30 p.m. Senior Deputy Medical Examiner Craig Stevens said an autopsy Tuesday showed Bradley died from asphyxiation. After his drunken driving arrest in Ojai in 1997,...

A little nip of NyQuil has landed former Santa Clara County Judge William Danser back in the county lockup. Danser was ordered last summer to stay away from alcohol as one of the terms he agreed to in exchange for serving his 90-day sentence under house arrest instead of jail after being convicted of fixing traffic tickets for friends and pro athletes. But on March 4, Danser took over-the-counter cough remedy without notifying his probation officer, according to his attorney and the county Probation Department. NyQuil contains alcohol, traces of which showed up Tuesday in the latest test results of...

BOSTON -- Maria Lopez could soon become Judge Lopez once again -- on television. Lopez, a former Massachusetts judge who resigned amid controversy over her conduct on the bench, is now being courted as a candidate for a legal television program in the same vein as "The People's Court" or "Judge Judy," according to her lawyer and her agent. George N. Tobia Jr., Lopez's attorney, said that he had been approached by an unnamed television network about finding a candidate for a legal program -- and Lopez immediately came to mind. "She was the first one who came to mind....

The decision was unanimous and harsh. Nine members of Alabama's judicial ethics court found Roy Moore guilty and immediately threw him off the bench. The panel said Moore put himself above the law by refusing to obey a court order to move the Ten Commandments from the courthouse rotunda. Presiding Judge William Thompson read from the ruling, "In defying that court's order, the Chief Justice placed himself above the law. No man in this country is so high that he is above the law." Moore remained as defiant as ever. Soon after the court's ruling, he said he had no...