The UN Security Council Monday nominated Ban Ki-Moon , the current South Korean Foreign Minister, to succeed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan when Annan's term ends in January. Ban won the Council's nomination after four straw polls in the Security Council definitively favored him over six other contenders from Asian countries. South Korea nominated Ban as [...]

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has said that France will impose a smoking ban in public locations in February 2007, and will likely extend a smoking ban in restaurants, clubs and bars in 2008. The ban will include schools, train stations, airports, offices, public buildings and other enclosed public spaces. Individuals who violate the [...]

Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont has declined to set a timeline for lifting martial law in Thailand, but will return the country to normalcy "as soon as possible," a government spokesperson said Monday. The spokesperson said the decision would be made in consultation with the new cabinet, which was installed Monday after gaining the approval [...]

Saddam Hussein's genocide trial continued Monday in Baghdad as a witness for the prosecution testified that troops under Hussein's command bulldozed her family into a mass grave. The woman was 13 during the alleged 1988 atrocities, living in the northern Kurdish region of Iraq. She further testified that after the mass burials, she was taken [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Douglas Branson of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that the frenzy over the Hewlett-Packard pretexting scandal overlooks not only much that is positive about the company's record, but also the dubious legal advice that the now-indicted corporate leaders received from their outside counsel… Three weeks ago on JURIST I [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Jeffrey Addicott of St. Mary's University School of Law, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, says the new Military Commissions Act reflects a clear and much-needed Congressional commitment to the war on terror, which to this point has been largely conducted in legal terms by the [...]

UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith on Sunday voiced tentative support for a formal, written UK constitution, saying that the possibility merited "serious" consideration. Goldsmith, however, rejected a proposal by Conservative leader David Cameron for a written bill of rights to replace the UK Human Rights Act , Britain's codification of the European Convention on Human [...]

Militia attacks in Sudan's Darfur region may have killed hundreds of people in August, many more than previously thought, according to a report issued Monday by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour . Arbour also urged the Sudanese government to open an independent investigation into the alleged killings, though she noted that [...]

The UN Security Council is set to meet in emergency session to discuss possible courses of action after North Korea (DPRK) exploded several test nuclear weapons underground Monday. North Korea's official Central News Agency reported that the tests were performed safely and no radiation leakage was detected. North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation [...]

The Serbian Radical Party unanimously reelected an indicted war criminal to head it at a meeting in Belgrade Sunday. Vojislav Seselj , a former close ally of late ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic , who died earlier this year while in the fifth year of his war crimes trial, is currently imprisoned at The Hague and [...]