The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the arrest of prominent Iranian-American scholar Dr. Haleh Esfandiari Sunday, saying that Esfandiari's arrest was "based on law" but did not elaborate on the reason for the arrest. On Saturday, the Kayhan, a state-controlled hardliner newspaper, accused Esfandiari of acting in concert with the United States and Israel [...]
The Iraqi Interior Ministry said Sunday that it will no longer allow news photographers or cameramen at the scenes of bomb attacks. Brigadier General Abdel-Karim Khalaf, head of the ministry's national operations center, told AFP that the prohibition was enacted in response to evidence being disturbed before the arrival of investigators, respect for the victims, [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that a US district judge did not abuse his discretion in refusing to allow an Arizona death row inmate to pursue an ineffective assistance of counsel claim after the inmate refused to allow his lawyer to present mitigating evidence at his sentencing hearing. In Schriro v. Landrigan , the [...]
Leadership within the Communist Party of Nepal – Maoists (CPN-M) has called on Nepal's interim parliament to immediately declare the country a federal democratic republic. CPN-M leadership formed a human protest chain through the parliament building on Sunday which police say was long enough to disrupt traffic throughout the capital city of Kathmandu. Senior members [...]
Joram Gumbo, a Zimbabwean delegate to the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) and member of the ruling party of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe , expressed outrage and contempt Sunday for the African organization's decision to send a fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe to investigate allegations of ongoing human rights abuses. Gumbo referred to the Pan-African Parliament, the African [...]
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has signed legislation making English the official state language. The bill , which was signed Friday and takes effect July 1, also gives state and local governments the discretion to provide official documents or hold meetings in non-English languages, and grants an exception to Native American tribal school districts to "provide [...]
JURIST Special Guest Columnist Jonathan Hafetz, Counsel with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, says that DOJ-proposed restrictions on lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees would chill communications between lawyers and their clients, suppress information about detentions, and inhibit detainees from meaningfully contesting the allegations against them… On Tuesday, the U.S. [...]
Japan's House of Councillors , the upper house of the National Diet, approved legislation Monday establishing procedures to facilitate a national constitutional referendum. The legislation requires a three-year public consultation period before parliament can vote on possible constitutional amendments, which must be approved by both houses of the National Diet by a two-thirds vote before [...]
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf traded barbs and accusations with opponents over the weekend after 39 people were killed Saturday in Karachi in clashes sparked by the arrival of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry , who had traveled there to address a meeting of lawyers supporting him in his fight against his March 9 suspension. The deaths [...]
Moscow City Court has rejected a bid by a surviving member of the Russian Romanov imperial dynasty to declare Tsar Nicholas II exonerated of the Soviet-era criminal charge against him and declare his 1918 murder at the hands of revolutionary Bolsheviks a political killing. A lower court had ruled similarly, and the Moscow City Court [...]
