Chinese dissident Li Jianping went on trial Wednesday in China's Shandong province, facing charges of "incitement to subvert state power" for allegedly posting pro-democracy articles on the Internet. According to Human Rights in China , he was arrested in May 2005 for posting essays on the Internet promoting a greater democracy in China. Prosecutors also [...]

Federal prosecutors have decided to drop its appeal in a case where the government sought to maintain a gag order to conceal the identity of a library that was subject to FBI demands for library patron records under the USA PATRIOT Act . The American Civil Liberties Union last year filed a lawsuit on behalf [...]

Nepalese riot police shot and killed a pro-democracy protester and arrested twenty-nine journalists and five human rights activists on Wednesday in the seventh straight day of pro-democracy demonstrations aimed at ending the direct rule government of King Gyanendra . The shooting in Nawalparasi, a town 200 km west of Kathmandu, was only the fourth death [...]

The International Court of Justice celebrated its 60th anniversary Wednesday, holding a solemn sitting at the Hague. The ICJ is the highest legal body in the United Nations and has served as a judicial intermediary between member states since the end of World War II. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and General Assembly President Jan Eliasson [...]

The new Canadian Conservative Party government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper tabled its Federal Accountability Act in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The sweeping legislation and the accompanying action plan , promised by the Conservatives during the winter federal election campaign, aims for more government transparency, targets corruption, and seeks to end "undue influence" [...]

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney signed a ground-breaking healthcare bill into law Wednesday, under which almost all residents, including the state's 550,000 uninsured, are required to obtain healthcare coverage. Romney also used his line-item veto power , however, to override eight portions of the bill, most notably a controversial provision which would levy a $295 per [...]

United States v. Libby, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, April 12, 2006 . Read the full text of the brief . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in a 2002 memorandum of understanding with three federal agencies agreed to reclassify approximately 10,000 public intelligence documents, taking them out of the public view. NARA made the agreement available Monday, naming two of the three agencies that were party to the agreement – the Central Intelligence Agency [...]

The UK Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld a lower court decision holding that Australian terror suspect David Hicks should be granted British citizenship, dismissing an appeal from Britain's Home Office . Hicks has been held at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 for allegedly supporting Taliban troops in Afghanistan. Hicks, who [...]

Iraqi High Criminal Court chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman , who is presiding over the trial of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein , said Wednesday that Hussein and one of his co-defendants, Hussein's half-brother and former Baath official Barzan Ibrahim , have refused to submit handwriting samples to the court so they could be analyzed by [...]