US President George W. Bush Thursday announced five nominations for top posts in the US Department of Justice (DOJ), including a federal judge sitting in Chicago for the number two spot. Bush's nominations include: US District Judge Mark Filip for deputy attorney general; US Attorney Kevin O'Connor for associate attorney general; Acting Associate General Attorney [...]
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UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Paulo Sergio Pinheiro said Friday that he obtained enough information from a five-day visit to Myanmar to determine the number of people killed during September's crackdown on pro-democracy protests . Pinheiro said he will compile his findings and report them to the UN Human Rights Council in December. Pinheiro [...]
The US House of Representatives passed the RESTORE Act of 2007 ("Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed and Effective Act of 2007") by a margin of 227-187 late Thursday without including a provision that would grant immunity to telecommunication companies that aided the US government in its domestic surveillance program . The House Judiciary [...]
US President George W. Bush on Thursday criticized the Senate's judicial confirmation process as overzealous and said the legislature's constitutional mandate to "advise and consent" can be turned into a method by which to "search and destroy" a nominee's reputation. In a speech Thursday evening at the 2007 National Lawyers Convention hosted by the Federalist [...]
The house arrest order against former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has been lifted, Pakistani police said Thursday. Bhutto was placed under house arrest for seven days early Tuesday in an effort to block her from leading a planned 160-mile march from Lahore to Islamabad protesting President Pervez Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule . Police [...]
The Supreme Court of Canada declined on Thursday to hear the appeals of two US military deserters who sought refugee status within the country. Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, both soldiers in the US Army, fled to Canada in 2004 to avoid deployment in Iraq and applied for asylum before the Canadian Immigration and Refugee [...]
The Parliament of the Georgian Republic approved a presidential decree on Thursday bringing an end to the country's national state of emergency effective Friday. Chairwoman of the Parliament Nino Burjanadze announced the decision following calls by both the US and EU to end emergency rule. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack welcomed the Georgian parliament's [...]
The Constitutional Council of France Thursday approved a controversial amendment to an immigration law that would allow voluntary DNA testing to establish family ties between recent immigrants and relatives already living in France. The Council also rejected an amendment that would have allowed for the collection of ethnic data to promote diversity. The French Parliament [...]
An official with Russia's Union of Right Forces (SPS) told a news conference Thursday that the opposition political party had filed a lawsuit with the country's Supreme Court requesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin not be allowed to run as a candidate in the country's upcoming parliamentary elections. Putin currently appears at the top of [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit threw out planned federal fuel economy standards for light trucks and SUVs Thursday, ruling that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) did not adequately consider the environmental impact of the proposed standards. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by several states and environmental groups, [...]
