The grand jury records from the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Georgia cannot be released despite their great historical significance, a federal appeals court said.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled  8-4 that federal judges don’t have authority to disclose grand jury records for reasons other than those provided for in the rules governing grand jury secrecy.

Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey were riding in a car on a rural road in July 1946 when a white mob stopped it at Moore’s Ford Bridge, overlooking the Apalachee River. The mob dragged the young black sharecroppers to the river’s edge and shot them to death.

The slayings shocked the nation, and the FBI descended upon the rural community in Walton County, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Atlanta. Following a monthslong investigation, more than 100 people reportedly testified before a federal grand jury in December 1946, but no one was indicted.

Historian Anthony Pitch wrote about the killings — “The Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town” — and continued his research after the book’s 2016 publication. He learned transcripts of the grand jury proceedings, once thought to have been destroyed, were stored by the National Archives.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has affirmed the conviction of a man who injured his wife by dousing her with hot grease after she said she was planning to leave him.

Justices handed down a unanimous decision Thursday in the appeal of Kendall Woodson, 42, of Greenwood, the Greenwood Commonwealth reported.

“We cannot find any arguable issue for appeal or reversible error committed by the trial court,” Justice David Ishee wrote in upholding the conviction.

Woodson was convicted in 2017 of domestic aggravated assault and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He is in the Holmes/Humphreys County Correctional Facility in Lexington.

Woodson and his wife had been married for 20 years at the time of the assault. According to court records, Anita Woodson testified that she got home from work around 12:45 a.m. on Aug. 6, 2015. During an argument, she told her husband she was going to leave him the next day.

She fell asleep, then woke up when Kendall Woodson pulled her up by the hair, began beating her and poured hot cooking oil on her head, while threatening to kill her. Anita Woodson was severely burned and received a concussion.

Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, was sentenced to more than three years in prison Thursday for obstructing a congressional investigation in a case that has sparked fears about presidential interference in the justice system.

Soon after Judge Amy Berman Jackson pronounced sentence, Trump publicly decried Stone’s conviction as unfair and prominent Republican legislators were giving tacit support for a pardon. But Trump said he wasn’t ready to act just yet.

“I want the process to play out. I think that’s the best thing to do because I would love to see Roger exonerated,” he said. “I’m going to watch the process. I’m going to watch very closely. … At some point I’ll make a determination.”

The case was marked by the Justice Department’s extraordinary about-face on a sentencing recommendation and a very public dispute between Trump and Attorney General William Barr, who said the president was undermining the department’s historical independence and making “it impossible for me to do my job.”

The president responded by asserting that he was the “chief law enforcement officer of the federal government.”

Stone was convicted in November on all seven counts of an indictment that accused him of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to tip the 2016 election.

He was the sixth Trump aide or adviser to be convicted on charges brought as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A Munich court on Monday convicted a German man of more than a dozen offenses of attempted murder for tricking women and girls into giving themselves electric shocks while he watched over the internet.

The regional court in the Bavarian capital sentenced the man, identified only as David G. for privacy reasons, to 11 years' imprisonment.

Court spokesman Florian Gliwitzky told The Associated Press that the 31-year-old defendant would be sent to a secure psychiatric clinic for treatment.

Prosecutors said the man contacted women and girls as young as 13 online over a five-year period starting in 2013, claiming to be a doctor seeking paid volunteers for a medical experiment on pain perception. He then persuaded them to attach a home-made contraption to the electricity mains and their extremities while he watched and issued instructions. None of the victims was ever paid.

Judges concluded that 13 of the 88 cases constituted attempted murder because the defendant had told the women to hold the cables to their temples or feet, causing electricity to flow through their brains or hearts.

The court also convicted him of two counts of serious bodily harm and five counts of premeditated bodily harm, of breaching the victims' privacy by filming them, and of illegally claiming to have a medical degree.

The southern Indian state of Kerala on Tuesday became the first to legally challenge a new citizenship law that has triggered nationwide demonstrations.

In a petition to the Supreme Court, the state government said the law violates the secular nature of India's Constitution, and accused the government of dividing the nation along communal lines.

The citizenship law backed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist party provides a path to naturalization for people from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, unless they’re Muslim. It has triggered nationwide protests and clashes with police, leading to 23 deaths.
The rallies have slowly morphed into much wider anti-government protests.

Critics say the law, which was passed by Parliament on Dec. 11, will be used in conjunction with a citizenship registry that could require all Indians to produce documents proving their origins, a challenge in a country where many people lack official records including birth certificates.

Kerala, a state ruled by a communist party, has strongly opposed the law and passed a resolution against in early January. The state government criticized the law in front-page advertisements in at least three national newspapers on Jan. 10, saying the state is "leading the efforts to protect constitutional values.”

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party said the move by the state was political.

Pinarayi Vijayan, chief minister of the state, has also written to the heads of 11 other states not ruled by Modi’s party, urging them to unite in their fight against the law.

A Cyprus court on Monday found a 19 year-old British woman guilty of fabricating claims that she was gang raped by 12 Israelis in a hotel room at a tourist resort in the east Mediterranean island nation, saying that her story lacked credibility.

Famagusta District Court Judge Michalis Papathanasiou said the defendant didn't tell the truth and tried to deceive the court with “evasive” statements in her testimony.

The woman says she is innocent and will appeal the ruling.

The case had triggered widespread interest in Britain and Israel. It was reported as a shocking gang rape until Cypriot authorities cast down on the woman's account.

The woman, who has not been identified, was found guilty of the charge of “public mischief,” which carries a maximum fine of 1,700 euros ($1,900) and up to a year imprisonment. She will remain in Cyprus until her Jan. 7 sentencing.

Emerging from the court house after the verdict, both the woman and her mother wore strips of fabric over their mouths onto which stitched lips were drawn.

The woman told investigators that she had been raped by as many as a dozen Israelis aged 15-20 on July 17. Cyprus police said she retracted the allegations 10 days later after investigators found what they said were inconsistencies in her statements.

A Mexican immigrant fighting President Donald Trump’s attempt to end a program shielding young immigrants from deportation says he is nervous about the case finally being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Martín Batalla Vidal is a lead plaintiff in one of the cases to preserve the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and has seen his name splashed in legal documents since 2016, when he first sued in New York.

The 29-year-old certified nursing assistant at a rehabilitation clinic for traumatic brain injury in Queens, New York, has described the legal journey since then as stressful, with people sending him hateful messages. He has had to sacrifice days at work so he could go to protests, press conferences and meetings with attorneys.

Even with his worries, Batalla Vidal is hopeful immigrants like him will be able to stay in the country.

“I don’t know what is going to happen,” said Batalla Vidal, who lives with his mother, two brothers and a dog in an apartment at the border of Queens and Brooklyn. “Whatever the outcome is, we know that we have fought hard for it and we will continue fighting. I am trying to be positive.”

The nation’s highest court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on the case Tuesday.

The program protects about 700,000 people, often called “Dreamers,” who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or came with families that overstayed visas.