Human rights activist Umida Niyazova was sentenced to seven years in prison after an Uzbek court convicted her Tuesday of illegal border crossing, smuggling, and distributing Islamic extremist propaganda. Niyazova worked for Human Rights Watch and was arrested earlier this year after returning to Uzbekistan from Kyrgyzstan on charges of crossing the border illegally and [...]
The Iraqi Parliament on Wednesday received a draft oil law that would regulate how profits from the country's oil wells will be shared by the different ethnic groups in the country. President Bush has said he believes that the agreement will help to end violence in Iraq, and has urged Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [...]
The US Supreme Court refused Tuesday to prevent the US military from transferring Guantanamo Bay detainee Abu Abdul Rauf Zalita to his home country of Libya, rejecting Zalita's arguments that he faced a "grave risk of arbitrary detention, torture, persecution and extrajudicial assassination" after being returned to Libya. In a one-sentence order , the Court [...]
The number of domestic wiretap applications granted by US state judges rose 20 percent in 2006 to 1,378, while federal judges granted only 461 applications, a drop of 26 percent, according to a new report filed by the Administrative Office of the US Courts . The figures released Monday in the 2006 Wiretap Report did [...]
The US Senate Intelligence Committee questioned top intelligence officials, including National Intelligence Director John M. "Mike" McConnell and National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander , Tuesday at a hearing on the Bush administration's proposed amendments to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) . Committee members appeared skeptical about the proposed amendments , [...]
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for two top suspects accused of committing war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan, according to an announcement from the court Wednesday. Ahmad Muhammad Harun , former Sudanese interior minister and current humanitarian affairs minister, faces 20 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and [...]
A secret court approved a record number of US government requests to search or eavesdrop on suspected terrorists or other persons for "foreign intelligence" purposes in 2006, endorsing all but one warrant, according to statistics made public by the US Department of Justice Tuesday. According to a three-page letter to House leaders filed under the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Adam Gershowitz of South Texas College of Law says the principal beneficiary of a new Texas child rape death penalty law will likely be the State of Louisiana, which may see its child rape statute transformed from an unconstitutional outlier to a constitutional model for the rest of the country… Texas is [...]
US President George W. Bush Tuesday vetoed a bill that would have provided $122 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but would have also required US troops to start pulling out of Iraq within four months. Bush has previously promised to veto any proposed legislation that included a timetable for a [...]
The Missouri Supreme Court Tuesday unanimously upheld a 2005 law that allows parents to sue people who help their minor daughters get an abortion without parental consent. Planned Parenthood had challenged the law on the basis that it infringed the group's First Amendment right to free speech by blocking it from disseminating information or counseling [...]
