The Arbitration Committee opened four new cases this week, and closed five cases, leaving seven currently open.

• Dbachmann: A case involving alleged misconduct on the part of administrator Dbachmann and editing by other users on several race-related articles. As a result of the case, Dbachmann was "reminded" not to use administrator tools in editing disputes, and the articles Afrocentrism and Race of ancient Egyptians were placed on article probation.

• Zeraeph: A case involving alleged misconduct by Zeraeph. As a result of the case, Zeraeph was banned for one year.

• John Gohde 2: A case involving alleged misconduct by John Gohde, which he denied. As a result of the case, Gohde was banned for one year.

• Jim62sch: A case involving alleged off-wiki harrasment by Jim62sch, possibly involving reporting of potential on-wiki violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As a result of the case, Jim62sch was instructed to "refrain from making any comments to another user that could reasonably be construed as harassing, threatening, or bullying".

• John Buscema: A case involving editing of the John Buscema article by editors including Tenebrae and Skyelarke. As a result of the case, both editors were banned from editing that article for three months.

• Waterboarding: A case involving a dispute between a large number of editors on Waterboarding, relating to the question as to whether the technique should be described as torture.

• Palestine-Israel articles: Yet another case relating to alleged disruption on Israel- and Palestine-related articles.

• Bluemarine: A case involving alleged civility and COI violations by User:Bluemarine on Matt Sanchez, the article on himself, which has also been edited tendentiously (from a hostile point of view) by a number of other editors, many of whom have been blocked.

• R. fiend: A case involving a controversial block of Ed Poor by R. fiend. The case has been suspended, since R. fiend has expressed his intention to resign adminship.

• Highways 2: A case involving editing by NE2 on articles relating to WikiProject U.S. Roads, allegedly against consensus of other editors involved with that wikiproject.

• IRC: A case involving an alleged personal attack by Tony Sidaway on Bishonen on #wikipedia-en-admins, which led to an edit war on WP:WEA, involving page protection and unprotection by David Gerard, Geogre and others, and a block of Giano II, which was quickly undone. Various findings of fact have been proposed relating to the editors in dispute, but no remedies have yet been proposed by arbitrators.

• Matthew Hoffman: A case involving controversial blocks of MatthewHoffman by a vanished user. Various remedies were proposed including either desysopping or admonishing the vanished user and annotating Matthew Hoffman's block log to reflect the arbitrators' view that the blocks were unjustified. A motion has been passed suspending the case for 30 days (until approximately 20 January , 2008) to allow for community input at a request for comment.