An Italian court on Tuesday ordered the retrial of Amanda Knox, the American college student jailed for four years for killing her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, but acquitted after an appeal. Here are some questions and answers arising from the decision:

What just happened here?

The Court of Cassation, the Italian equivalent of the Supreme Court, overturned the acquittals of Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and ordered them to stand trial again before an appeals court in Florence.

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They had been convicted in 2009 when Knox was sentenced to 26 years in prison and Sollecito got 25 years. An appeals court freed both of them when it overturned the convictions in 2011, ruling that prosecutors had provided faulty DNA evidence, no murder weapon and otherwise insufficient proof.

 

What was the basis for Tuesday's court ruling?

We don’t know yet. Italian law gives the court three months to explain its decision. In the American system, an appeals court would generally explain itself upon issuing the ruling.

Any idea what they might be thinking?

Prosecutors have filed 16 points of appeal — essentially disputes over how the law was applied at trial, not over the facts of the case. Among other points, prosecutors question the appeals court’s ruling that DNA testing was faulty and that certain witnesses were unreliable.

This sounds an awful lot like double jeopardy.

Italian law prohibits a version of double jeopardy — being tried anew for a crime for which you have already been cleared, said Praxilla Trabattoni, an Italian lawyer who was followed the case. This case is technically different.

Trabattoni said that the Supreme Court was essentially saying that "when the appeals court was evaluating whether she did it or didn’t, the appeals court did that on the basis of evidence that shouldn’t have been admitted.”

Italian law says that a judgment is not definitive until it’s cleared every degree of trial, Trabattoni said, and the Supreme Court is considered the third degree of trial, after the lower court and the appeals court. If the Supreme Court had upheld the acquittal and then prosecutors had brought a new case entirely, that would be considered double jeopardy under the Italian system, Trabattoni said.

What happens next?

After the Supreme Court issues its explanation, an appeals court in Florence gets the case. A retrial probably would not begin until late this year or early next year.

Where is Amanda Knox these days?

She is a student at the University of Washington, where she stayed up until at least about 2 a.m. Pacific time to learn her fate, one of her lawyers, Carlo Dalla Vedova, told reporters, according to The Associated Press. Now 25, she has a memoir, “Waiting to Be Heard,” coming out April 30, for which publisher HarperCollins reportedly paid her $4 million.

In a statement Tuesday, she said: “No matter what happens, my family and I will face this continuing legal battle as we always have, confident in the truth and with our heads held high in the face of wrongful accusations and unreasonable adversity.” 

Does she have to go back to Italy for the retrial?

No. And it appears unlikely that she will. Knox spent almost four years behind bars after her original arrest and conviction, before the appeals court reversed it. The retrial can go forward without Knox being present.

“It simply will proceed, it will be strenuously defended, and we fully expect she will be exonerated,” one of her lawyers, Theodore Simon, told NBC News.

What happens if the conviction is reinstated? Does she get sent back to jail in Italy?

We’re several big steps away from that, but it’s possible. First, Knox would have to be convicted by the appeals court. Then the Italian Supreme Court would have to uphold that verdict. Then Italy would have to seek Knox’s extradition from the United States.

The United States and Italy have an extradition treaty under which the U.S. would be bound to send Knox back, said Juliet Sorensen, who teaches international criminal law at the Northwestern University School of Law.

Such a decision would risk a political furor here at home. Knox has been portrayed by the American media as someone caught up in a hopelessly dysfunctional Italian legal system.

Still, if the conviction is reinstated, “I expect that Italy will make that request because it’s a serious crime,” Sorensen said. “At the end of the day, if she’s convicted of murder, I don’t foresee the Italian authorities letting it drop.”

And Meredith Kercher’s family? What do they make of this?

Kercher’s sister Stephanie, 29, told ITV News, the British partner of NBC News, that all the family ever wanted was the truth about the night of Nov. 1, 2007.

“We are never going to be happy about any outcome because we have still lost Meredith, but we obviously support the decision and hope to get answers from it,” she said.

What became of Sollecito, the boyfriend?

He released his own book last year: "Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox." In it, he reportedly wrote that police slapped and stripped him during an interrogation, and that they tried to get him to save himself by turning on Knox.

These days he is 29 and studying in Verona, according to British newspaper reports.

Giulia Bongiorno, one of his lawyers, stressed that the Supreme Court ruling was not the same as a conviction.

“Unfortunately we have to continue the battle,” she told reporters, according to Reuters. “This is a sentence that says, with regards to the acquittal, that something more is needed.”

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

Italy court: Amanda Knox to be retried for Meredith Kercher murder

Revealed: Why court cleared Amanda Knox

Report: Amanda Knox 'loves Italy' and might return

Pope Francis has a to-do list as long as his cassock.

The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio will lead 1.2 billion Catholics and a church at a crossroads — wrestling with scandal after scandal, changing demographics and calls for liberalization.

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Here are seven pressing challenges for the new pope:

1. Cleaning house at the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI ordered that a report on church bureaucracy be shown to only two men — himself and his successor. After he gives it a read, Francis will have to address backbiting, corruption and cronyism inside the Vatican and increasing pressure to make its finances more open. Church analysts were watching closely to see whether cardinals would elect a Vatican insider protective of church secrecy. Instead they picked a man from halfway around the world.

2. Leading the church out of the sex abuse scandal. The crisis consumed Benedict’s papacy and threatened to overshadow the conclave, with abuse victims even calling for some cardinals to recuse themselves from the selection process. Victims’ groups still want the Vatican to disclose more about its role in failing to protect children. One such organization, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said it was grateful that Francis was not on its list of the worst choices for pope — but warned that very little about the crisis has been exposed in South America.

3. Getting along with other faiths. Benedict caused a furor when, in 2006, he quoted an emperor who had characterized some teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman." Benedict is credited with repairing rifts with Jews, however, and the new pope has also been praised for cultivating a strong relationship with Judaism. After Francis' election, the head of the World Jewish Congress praised him as someone "known for his open-mindedness."

4. Winning the West. Benedict couldn’t stop the decline of the church in its traditional stronghold of Europe. Meanwhile in the United States, a Pew study released Wednesday found that only 27 percent of the church’s members defined themselves as "strong" Catholics — a four-decade low. Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who was considered a papal contender, expressed hope that Francis would fight rising secularism: "We pledge our faithful support for the Holy Father as he leads the Church in proclaiming the New Evangelization, inviting all people to a develop a closer relationship with Christ and to share that gift with others."

5. Should women be priests? And should priests marry? Francis will have to address growing debate within the church about the celibacy requirement for priests. A priest in Australia admitted last year that he had been married for a year and said "there are more like me." Benedict also delivered a veiled rebuke to an Austrian priests' group that wants the church to allow women to be ordained and to get rid of the celibacy requirement.

6. Modernization. Majorities of Catholics in the United States have said in surveys that they want the pope to lead the church in a more liberal direction. A New York Times/CBS News poll of Catholics last week found that six in 10 support gay marriage, and seven in 10 want the church to allow birth control. Three-quarters supported abortion in at least some circumstances. In Argentina, then-Cardinal Bergoglio clashed with the president over a 2010 law allowing gay marriage. "It is a move by the father of lies to confuse and deceive the children of God," he said.

7. Persecution. Open Doors, a group that documents Christian persecution, reported earlier this year that 100 million Christians are oppressed around the worldwide, with countries in Asia and the Middle East by far the worst offenders. Benedict claimed that Christians are the most oppressed religious group in the world, facing discrimination and often violence. As pope, Francis must also be the church’s most prominent diplomat. "This situation is intolerable," Benedict said in 2010, "since it represents an insult to God and to human dignity."

Related:

Meet the new pope: Francis is humble leader who takes bus to work

New pontiff's choice of name has deep meaning for Catholic Church

Full Pope Francis coverage from NBC News 

 

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 14, 2013 4:06 AM EDT

Pope Francis, the first man in the modern era from outside Europe to lead the Roman Catholic Church, prizes compassion, humility and simplicity — so much that he gave up his chauffeur in Argentina and took the bus to work.

He is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus, a Catholic order founded in the 16th century by St. Ignatius Loyola. Its  members, known as Jesuits, take a vow of poverty and are known for their work among the poor and their scholarship.

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“A man who calmly stands for what’s right and just,” Cardinal Edward Egan, the archibishop emeritus of New York, told NBC News. “A man of great compassion for the poor. That is what they point to first and foremost.”

During an economic crisis that gripped his home country over the last decade, Francis, then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, asserted himself as a champion of the least fortunate and a defender of social justice.

“We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least,” Bergoglio told Latin American bishops in 2007, according a recent profile in the National Catholic Reporter. “The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.”

The new pope is known to be conservative on social issues. He has opposed abortion and gay marriage, and in 2010 he drew the ire of Argentina’s president when he said that gay adoption was a form of discrimination against children.

Vote: Was Pope Francis a good choice?

Argentina in 2010 became the first country in Latin America to legalize gay marriage. During the debate that preceded the change, Bergoglio called the bill “a plan to destroy God’s plan.”

“This is no mere legislative bill,” he said. “It is a move by the father of lies to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner shot back that the then-cardinal was speaking in terms “really reminiscent of the times of the Inquisition.”

As archbishop, Bergoglio had the option to live in a palace but chose a simple apartment, according to the National Catholic Reporter. He gave up a limousine for the bus, and cooks his own meals.

In the first act of his papacy, he chose the name Francis, becoming the namesake of St. Francis of Assisi, who gave up his riches and chose a life of poverty and prayer.

He was born in Buenos Aires on Dec. 17, 1936, his father an Italian railway worker. He was elevated to cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II.

At 76, he had been considered by some observers too old for the job — particularly following Benedict, who said that at 85 he was no longer healthy enough to lead the church. Francis has only one lung, the other removed because of an infection when he was a teenager.

Still, Egan said: “I can assure you that he is not feeble in any way.”

Related: Single lung not likely to hinder new pope

His official biographer has said that Francis has both keen political instincts and self-effacing humility, and that he would encourage a kind of shoe-leather evangelism within the church. He is known to walk the streets of Buenos Aires to talk to the people.

He told priests in Argentina last year: “Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the word in body as well as spirit.”

Perhaps helping him overcome the traditional reluctance to elect a Jesuit pope, he fell out of favor among some Jesuits in Argentina after he was elected to the title of Jesuit provincial in 1973.

Argentina was ruled in the late 1970s by a brutal military dictatorship, and many Jesuits were drawn to a progressive activist movement within the church known as liberation theology. Church leaders backed the dictatorship publicly, and Bergoglio discouraged priests from political activism.

Two of his Jesuit priests who followed the liberation theology movement were kidnapped from the slums by the military regime in 1976. Bergoglio personally appealed to the dictator, Jorge Videla, and had them freed. One of the priests later accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads in the first place.

Bergoglio told his biographer, Sergio Rubin, that he often hid people on church property during the regime years and once gave his own identity papers to a man to help him get out of the country.

He later was sent to a school in northern Argentina to teach high school chemistry, an assignment seen as a type of exile, before the archbishop of Buenos Aires recalled him to be his auxiliary bishop.

“He’s a strong man, a man who can put up with criticism,” said George Weigel, NBC News’ Vatican analyst. “Cardinal Bergoglio put up with a lot of criticism from his brother Jesuits for many years.”

Francis earned a degree in chemistry and was ordained a priest in December 1969. He was named archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998.

He was said to be the runner-up the last time cardinals met to choose a pope. An anonymous account of the 2005 conclave said that he had the support of some of the more liberal cardinals before giving up the fight and telling his backers to vote for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Benedict XVI.

Related: New pope: 'Pray for me and I will see you soon' 

The account was attributed to a cardinal who leaked his diary to an Italian publication. It said that Francis, then Bergoglio, amassed 40 votes, more than half of what he would have needed for election, but still trailed Benedict after three ballots. His candidacy faltered on the fourth ballot, the diary said.

As Bergoglio cast his ballot beneath Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment,” the account said: “He had his face fixed on the image of Christ judging the souls at the end of time. A suffering face that implored: God, don’t to this to me.” The cardinal later declined to comment on the account.

By choosing a name no pope had chosen before, he may be signaling an era of rebirth for a church troubled by corruption and a sexual abuse crisis.

“We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of a self-referential church,” the new pope said before the conclave, according to the National Catholic Reporter. “It’s true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that’s sick because it's self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The first clue about what kind of leader the next pope will be — liberal or conservative, reformer or by-the-book — will come only minutes after the smoke clears at the Sistine Chapel.

From a balcony at St. Peter’s Basilica, the world will learn not just who has been elected but what he chooses to call himself, a decision steeped in centuries of church history — and a good indicator of the new pope’s vision and inspiration.

Until the sixth century, popes went by their given names. There was a Pope Sylvester, a Pope Julius and a Pope Victor. Then, in 533, a priest named Mercurius was elected to lead the church and decided that a pope named after a pagan god  — "Mercury" — just wouldn’t do.

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He chose to go by John II. Since then, most popes have abandoned their birth names and adopted tributes to saints, popes and even relatives who have gone before.

“You’re trying to pick up some of the glow of your predecessor,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, Vatican analyst for the National Catholic Reporter.

It is a solemn decision. Newly-elected popes are asked only two questions by the senior cardinal inside the chapel. The first is whether he wants the job. The second: “By which name do you wish to be called?”

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope, in 2005, he chose Benedict XVI as a tribute to two men. One was the previous Pope Benedict, who guided the church through World War I. But Benedict XVI said that he also meant the choice as homage to St. Benedict, an intellectual like Ratzinger and one of the patron saints of Europe, for his “powerful call to the irrefutable Christian roots of European culture and civilization.”

In particular, Benedict XVI prayed to his saintly namesake to help Catholics keep Christ at the center of their lives.

“Benedict saw Europe as the key problem and the place where we really needed to focus,” Reese said.

But the choice is not always a nod to papal history. The reformer Pope John XXIII, elected in 1958, said he picked the name it part because it was the name of the small parish church where he was baptized. John is by far the most popular name for a pope to choose, making it  difficult to predict what a John XXIV would be signaling by taking the name.

In 1978, Cardinal Albino Luciani declared himself Pope John Paul I, the first pope to choose a double name — and the first to declare himself “the First.”

He said that he meant the name as a tribute to his two immediate predecessors, John XXIII and Paul VI. They had led the church through the Second Vatican Council, which modernized the church’s relationships with the rest of the world and other branches of Christianity.

When John Paul I died just 33 days later, he was remembered so adoringly that Reese recalls making a bet with a colleague that the next pope would take the same double name.

“He just caught everybody’s imagination,” Reese said. “This smiling pope. It was just a whole month of very positive response to him.”

He won the bet, and Pope John Paul II led the church for the next 27 years.

This time around, only one bet would be a sure loser. No pope has chosen to be called Peter II. There’s no rule against it, but it is seen as poor form — an honor reserved for the first pope.

Church analysts say there are several names to watch for as hints to the new papacy.

The choice of Leo XIV could be a call for social justice, said Matthew Bunson, senior correspondent for the Catholic publishing nonprofit Our Sunday Visitor. Leo XIII, who served at the turn of the 20th century, and sought to help the world understand the dignity of workers.

Choosing Pius XIII, on the other hand, would be a more conservative choice, and a “statement of determination to defend the teachings of the faith,” Bunson said. Pius V led in opposition to the Protestant Reformation, and Pius VI and VII both died prisoners.

John Paul III, even if only as a tribute to the beloved, globetrotting John Paul II, might be seen by the world as a repudiation of Benedict, Reese said.

Of course, the new pope could always choose to be called Benedict XVII — certainly a possibility because Benedict XVI appointed most of the cardinals who will choose his successor. But such a selection might disappoint Catholics who are hoping for a reformer after a papacy marked by a sexual abuse scandal, other missteps and shrinking membership in the United States and Europe.

Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. The new pope could choose to make his mark and choose a name never used before. Reese said he has always wondered why no one has adopted the name Pope Joseph.

Or he could set 1.2 billion Catholics around the world scratching their heads.

“The new guy,” Reese said, “could be John Paul Benedict I.”

Related: 

Full coverage of the papal abdication from NBC News

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 12, 2013 6:29 PM EDT

A son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who served as an al-Qaida spokesman and warned Americans after Sept. 11 that “the storm shall not stop” pleaded not guilty Friday in a civilian court to plotting to kill Americans.

Handcuffed and in a blue prison suit, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith wore earphones to listen to a live translation of the hearing in a heavily guarded federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan, walking distance from the World Trade Center site.

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He entered the plea through a court-appointed lawyer and was ordered to return to court April 8. Abu Ghaith himself spoke only twice, answering “Yes” when he was asked whether he understood the charge and whether he wanted representation.

Prosecutors disclosed that Abu Ghaith was captured Feb. 28 overseas and flown to New York the following day. They said he had yielded enough information after his capture to fill 22 pages. They did not give details of what he said.

An indictment unsealed Thursday accuses Abu Ghaith of taking part in al-Qaida plots to kill Americans, both before and after the 2001 terror attacks. It describes him as such a close confidant that bin Laden summoned him for help on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001.

Abu Ghaith gave a speech after Sept. 11 and warned Americans that “the storm shall not stop, especially the airplanes storm” and suggested that Muslims and opponents of the United States should not fly or live in high rises.

Jordanian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News that Abu Ghaith was captured by Turkish officials in Ankara, where a court ruled that he had entered the country with a fake passport.

The Turkish government ordered him deported to Kuwait, where he was born, but arranged for him to travel through Jordan, where he was taken into custody by American law enforcement, the sources said.

NBC News exclusive: Iran was holding Abu Ghaith, U.S. officials say

Rep. Peter King of New York, a Republican who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, announced the capture Thursday and credited the FBI and CIA.

Some Republican members of Congress expressed surprise that they had not been consulted, and said that Abu Ghaith should have been prosecuted as an enemy combatant and held by the military at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

They issued statements Friday denouncing the decision and saying that the Obama administration was weakening the nation by not having al-Qaida figures like Abu Ghaith detained and interrogated at military facilities.

“The administration risks missing important opportunities to gather intelligence to prevent future attacks and save lives,” Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire said in a statement.

In November 2009, the administration announced plans to try five people accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks in civilian court in New York. The White House backed off that plan a year and a half later after a political backlash.

Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said civilian courts have “a pretty good, strong track record” in handling terrorism prosecutions. He cited the men convicted of trying to blow up an airliner in December 2009 and detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010, both of whom got life sentences in civilian courts.

“It is the consensus view of the president’s national security team and of agencies all across the federal government that this is the best way to handle bringing Abu Ghaith to justice,” Earnest said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Intelligence Committee, said she expected that Abu Ghaith would be put away for life.

“The bottom line is the federal criminal court system works,” she said.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 8, 2013 8:11 AM EST