A New York state appeals court ruled Thursday that a same-sex partner lacks standing to assert parental rights over the biological child of her partner unless she has adopted the child. The ruling limits parental rights under NY Domestic Relations Law § 70 to biological or adoptive parents, following precedent set in the 1991 case [...]
Advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on Uganda to end what it said was the use of torture and unlawful arrest by the country's Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force (JATT). According to HRW, JATT engaged in 106 documented cases of illegal or prolonged detentions between August 2008 and February 2009, and employed torture methods against [...]
Fijian President Ratu Josefa Iloilo announced Friday that he was suspending the country's constitution , and revoking the appointment of all judicial officers, after the Fiji Court of Appeal on Thursday ruled his appointment of military officer Commodore Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama as Prime Minister unconstitutional. Iloilo had appointed Baininmara following a 2006 coup , but the Court of Appeal [...]
CIA director Leon Panetta on Thursday outlined new techniques to be employed by the agency in their detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists. The new policies include discontinuing the use of contractors to conduct interrogations and a renewal of the agency's pledge to comply with President Barack Obama's executive order to discontinue the use of [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist William Luneburg of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says the Obama administration's restrictive new lobbying directive cannot altogether eliminate the phenomenon of "influence peddling" nor can it change Washington culture in one fell swoop, but it may improve things by small incremental steps…. The Beltway is buzzing from a new [...]
The US has been slow to conduct habeas corpus hearings for Guantanamo Bay detainees despite a June 2008 US Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush mandating prompt hearings, Amnesty International (AI) said in a Thursday report . The group said that since the ruling, only 12 detainees have received the hearings, and that only one detainee has actually been released since President [...]
The Bolivian National Congress approved Thursday the general framework of the electoral law that the new Bolivian constitution mandated within 60 days of its adoption. Earlier Thursday, Bolivian President Evo Morales declared himself on hunger strike until congress passed the law since the 60-day period decreed in the constitution had lapsed Wednesday. The law, which [...]
A jury of US Marines acquitted Sgt. Ryan Weemer Thursday of one count of murder and one count of dereliction of duty for his involvement in the shooting death of a detained Iraqi insurgent during a Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-Iraq) November 2004 offensive in Fallujah . Weemer's defense lawyers argued that he acted in self-defense . [...]
Officials in North Korea announced Thursday that the country would revise its constitution . The announcement came during a meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) attended by the country's leader, Kim Jong-Il. According to the North Korean state media outlet Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) , the measure to "approve and supplement" the constitution [...]
The French National Assembly on Thursday defeated a controversial internet piracy bill that would have cut off internet access for those who repeatedly illegally download copyrighted material. Under the bill, which won preliminary parliamentary approval last week, any internet user tagged by an ISP as downloading the material would initially receive a warning, followed by [...]
