Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, has said that he has abandoned his plan to subpoena executives of three top phone companies after Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that national security concerns would prevent executives from speaking about allegedly providing phone records to the NSA. Verizon and BellSouth have [...]
UK Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith will call for prosecutors to study whether the British court-martial system is adequate for prosecuting soldiers accused of misconduct in Iraq , the Times of London reported Wednesday. The development follows Tuesday's acquittal of three infantrymen accused of manslaughter in the death of a 15-year-old Iraqi boy who prosecutors [...]
The US Department of Defense has issued comprehensive guidelines for the treatment of detainees that direct doctors to force-feed detainees who endanger their own lives as a result of a hunger strike. The guidelines , aimed primarily at the recent wave of hunger strikes by detainees at Guantanamo Bay , also gives doctors a limited [...]
A Vatican panel Tuesday condemned same-sex marriage as a major threat to the family, along with abortion , contraception and in vitro fertilization. The Pontifical Council for the Family , founded by Pope John Paul II in 1981, issued a 57-page document titled "Family and Human Procreation," saying that "he unitive act of man and [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called the May FBI raid of the congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) an "unusual" but necessary step on Tuesday, comparing the office search to past searches of the homes and vehicles of other members of Congress. The US Department of Justice has consistently defended the search of Jefferson's [...]
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000: Trafficking in Persons Report, US Department of State, June 6, 2006, . Read the full text of the report. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
SB 33, Abortion: Prohibits abortion, except when necessary to save the life of the mother; State of Louisiana, passed by the Louisiana Senate June 5, 2006 . Read the full text of the bill . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Fifteen of the 17 Canadian terror suspects arrested Friday on suspicion of planning attacks in southern Ontario and Toronto appeared in court in Brampton, Ontario, near Toronto Tuesday. Although an eight-page document prepared by Crown prosecutors detailing precise charges against the accused that were initially set out in summary Monday was neither read out in [...]
Prosecutors in Egypt on Tuesday added 15 days to the detention time for 185 people who have participated in pro-reform demonstrations since April. All but 21 of the detainees are members of the Muslim Brotherhood ; most of the others belong to the opposition reform group Kifaya . Egyptian law allows detainees to be held [...]
A former civil servant was found guilty Tuesday of defrauding the Canadian government of more than $1.6 million in the so-called sponsorship scandal that helped bring down Canada's Liberal Party government in January. After seven days of deliberations, a jury in Montreal convicted Chuck Guité , a former bureaucrat in the Department of Public Works [...]
