German Social Democratic Party (SPD) lawmakers said Thursday that they will not support a recently proposed bill that would ban paintball in response to a March school shooting that left 16 dead , including the 17-year-old gunman. The move came just two days after they had agreed on the proposal along with the Christian Democratic [...]

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Andrei Nesterenko said Thursday that Russia has proposed changes to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) . The 1990 treaty restricts the number of troops and heavy weapons that can be stationed between the Atlantic coast and Russia's Ural mountains. Russia suspended its responsibilities under the CFE in November 2007 [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist William G. Ross of Cumberland School of Law, Samford University, says that while the US Court Supreme Court might benefit from the nomination of an elected public official, President Obama should not nominate such a person to serve as a Justice merely for the sake of diversifying the Court… Some U.S. senators [...]

New Hampshire Governor John Lynch said Thursday that he is willing to sign a same-sex marriage bill into law, but only if the legislature amends it to make it clear that religious groups will not be required to perform or recognize the unions. The New Hampshire legislature gave final approval to the bill last week [...]

Spain's Cabinet approved a draft bill Thursday that would liberalize Spanish abortion law. The new bill, which must now be approved by Parliament, would give women the right to an abortion any time during the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy. During the next eight weeks an abortion would be allowed only if two doctors determined [...]

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Thursday that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) misled Congress about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush administration. Pelosi, the former top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee , said that CIA officials had explicitly said that they were not using the [...]

The government of Myanmar received widespread international criticism after jailing democracy advocate and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Thursday for violating the terms of her house arrest. Myanmar's military junta arrested Suu Kyi after a US man swam across a lake to the compound in which she was confined and spent at least one [...]

Progetto di legge: 2180 (Bill 2180), Italian Chamber of Deputies, May 14, 2009, . Read the full text of the legislative materials . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The German Bundestag voted Wednesday in favor of heightened requirements for late-term abortions including a three-day waiting period and a mandatory psychological evaluation. Current law in Germany outlaws abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy except in circumstances in which the mental or physical health of the mother is threatened or when the fetus is severely [...]

Speaker of the Russian State Duma Boris Gryzlov said Wednesday that a proposal by President Dmitry Medvedev to allow parliament to select the head of the Constitutional Court will be supported by the parliamentary majority. Under the proposed legislative amendments , the 19 members of the court would no longer have the authority to elect [...]