The UK Department of Education and Skills issued updated school uniform guidelines Thursday that allow school heads to ban Muslim veils but stopped short of imposing a government ban on religious dress that covers students' faces. A draft version of the guidelines , published in March, proposed allowing schools to ban some religious dress to [...]
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf signed a "reconciliation ordinance" Friday, granting amnesty to former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on corruption charges. The agreement reached between the two political rivals clears the way Bhutto to return to Pakistan from self-exile in London and Dubai to campaign in parliamentary elections for prime minister later this year. The [...]
The investigating officer who headed the Article 32 hearing for US Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich has recommended that Wuterich not face unpremeditated murder charges but instead be tried for negligent homicide, defense lawyers said Thursday. Wuterich, the former squad leader implicated in the killing and suspected cover-up of the death of 24 Iraqi civilians [...]
Senate confirmation hearings for US Attorney General nominee Michael B. Mukasey could begin as early as October 17, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Thursday. Leahy on Tuesday listed what he described as topics of "concern" to be addressed in the upcoming Senate confirmation hearings in a letter to Mukasey. Leahy encouraged Mukasey [...]
A federal jury awarded six recording companies $222,000 Thursday in Virgin v. Thomas , the first music file-sharing lawsuit to go to trial, ordering Jammie Thomas to pay for sharing 24 copyrighted songs on the Internet. The recording companies, including Sony BMG, Arista Records, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings, Capitol Records and Warner Bros. Records , [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that US legislation now on the books would allow Blackwater personnel reasonably accused of the unlawful killing of persons in Iraq to be prosecuted in US federal or military courts… Does the United States have extraterritorial legislation that would currently allow prosecution [...]
JURIST Special Guest Columnist and British human and medical rights activist Dr. David Nicholl, a neurologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, says that the ethical dilemma posed by the continuing involvement of the medical profession in state executions should be resolved by changing the law and eliminating the death penalty once and for all… Doctors [...]
Leading Democrats on Capitol Hill on Thursday demanded that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) hand over two 2005 legal opinions that reportedly endorse severe interrogation techniques . Earlier Thursday, the New York Times first reported that the DOJ circulated internal memos, the first of which was released soon after Alberto Gonzales became US Attorney [...]
The Supreme Court of Canada Thursday ruled that police officers can be held liable for inadequate investigations, in a case that could have major repercussions for the way that Canadian police work is conducted. In a 6-3 decision, judges found that police owe a duty of care to suspects to conduct a conscientious investigation, and [...]
Amnesty International Thursday urged medical professionals worldwide to refrain from participating in executions. In a new report examining the practice of execution by lethal injection , Amnesty said doctors and nurses break their ethical oaths by assisting in lethal injections and urged them to withdraw their cooperation. Amnesty also criticized governments for putting medical personnel [...]
