US senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) on Thursday released the executive summary of a Senate Armed Services Committee report that says senior US officials are to blame for the use of abusive interrogation techniques against detainees held in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. The report cites a February 2002 memorandum signed by [...]
Former NASDAQ stock market chairman Bernard Madoff was arrested Thursday by federal agents on charges of securities fraud. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Madoff and his investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC , on Thursday with engaging in a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme. He has been charged with violating the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist A. Wayne MacKay of Dalhousie Law School in Halifax, Canada, says that while Governor General Michaelle Jean’s decision early this month to grant Prime Minister Stephen Harper's request to suspend the Canadian parliament until January to avoid losing a confidence vote to a coalition of opposition parties is politically popular and what [...]
Ireland has agreed to hold a second referendum on the European Union reform pact known as the Treaty of Lisbon , according to draft materials circulated by the French government ahead of a meeting of EU government leaders in Brussels Thursday. France holds the European Union Presidency through the end of December. A draft summit [...]
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan told CNN Thursday that she would go before the Illinois Supreme Court to have Governor Rod Blagojevich declared unfit to hold office if he did not resign or get impeached by the state legislature. Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested Tuesday by agents from the Federal [...]
Vice President of the European Commission Responsible for Justice, Freedom, and Security Jacques Barrot on Wednesday reported that European Union (EU) governments are violating people's right to travel freely among the EU member states. Directive 2004/38/EC gives nationals of EU member states the right to move and reside freely among any of the states. According [...]
The Brazilian Supreme Court on Wednesday indicated that they will rule in favor of indigenous groups in a land dispute, but postponed a final decision on the case. Eight of 11 judges voted in favor of evicting a group of non-indigenous farmers from an Amazonian reservation, but the case was postponed when one judge requested [...]
Portuguese Minister of State and Foreign Affairs Luis Amado on Wednesday sent a letter to European Union (EU) foreign ministers urging EU members to take in any detainees released from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay . Amado said that Portugal would be willing to take in detainees, and that other EU member states [...]
The UN Security Council on Wednesday added the name of a Pakistani charity seen as a front for the group being blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks to its list of entities subject to asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo as a terrorist organization. At the urging of the Indian government , Jamaat-ud-Dawa was [...]
Executions in the US are at a 14-year low and the number of death sentences has dropped 60 percent since the 1990s, according to a report released Thursday by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) , a non-profit organization that opposes the death penalty. There were 37 executions in 2008 with no more expected this [...]
