Arkansas Secretary of State Charlie Daniels has certified a ballot measure which could prohibit gays, lesbians and other unmarried cohabiting couples from becoming either foster or adoptive parents. Daniels announced Monday that the Arkansas Family Council Action Committee had submitted petitions containing the valid signatures of more than 85,000 registered voters – nearly 25,000 more [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Ali Khan of Washburn University School of Law says that the nomination of Asif Zardari, the widower of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to contest Pakistan's next presidential election in the wake of General Pervez Musharraf's resignation is a disturbing development that would muddle the presidency's authority rather than restore its [...]
Prosecutors in Thailand have asked the nation's Supreme Court to seize over $2 billion from the frozen accounts and holdings of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his wife Pojamarn Shinawatra , who already forfeited nearly $400,000 when they fled to the UK while on bail from corruption charges. Earlier this month, the Court announced [...]
Former Pakistani prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) head Nawaz Sharif on Monday followed through with threats to withdraw his party from the coalition government. Sharif had set Friday as the deadline for the PML-N and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to agree on the reinstatement of all of the judges ousted [...]
Officials from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) said Friday that notes found in the clothes of three Guantanamo detainees who committed suicide in 2006 indicated that they were seeking martyrdom. Military investigations of the suicides began immediately after the two Saudi and one Yemeni men were found in their cells, and the military quickly [...]
The Texas Third Court of Appeals has allowed money-laundering indictments to stand against two alleged co-conspirators of former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) , rejecting their argument that the state laws used to prosecute them were unconstitutionally vague or overbroad. The Austin-based intermediate appellate court on Friday affirmed a trial court's denial of [...]
A US military judge in Colorado sentenced US Army Pfc. Robin Long Friday to 15 months in prison, dishonorable discharge and demotion after Long pleaded guilty to desertion with intent to remain away permanently. Long fled to Canada in 2005 in moral opposition to the war in Iraq and filed for refugee status there, but [...]
Officials for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced Friday that a Scottish judge will preside over the preparatory stages of the upcoming war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic . The designation of Judge Iain Bonomy , who served on the ICTY trial court for late Yugoslav president [...]
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision Friday that provisions in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 establishing the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) are constitutional. In 2006, the Free Enterprise Fund, a non-profit public interest organization promoting economic growth, lower taxes, [...]
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Friday abandoned a pilot program it created to allow certain illegal immigrants to coordinate their removal from the US with ICE without the risk of home raids, arrest or detention. The Scheduled Departure Program was a pilot program started on August 5 that ran through August 22 in [...]
