Defence lawyers are vowing to appeal the convictions of four former security guards after a judge gave them lengthy prison terms for their roles in a 2007 shooting of unarmed civilians in Iraq.

The US government may resume funding of embryonic stem cell research for now, an appeals court said, but the short-term approval may be of little help to research scientists caught in a legal battle that has just begun.

A US judge temporarily blocked Obama administration regulations expanding stem cell research.

Iran must pay $2.65bn to the families of the 241 US service members killed in the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, a judge declared today.

Iran has been ordered to pay $323m in damages to a former US hostage because of evidence it directed terrorists to kidnap Americans in Lebanon during the mid-1980s.