Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko recommended to the Ukrainian Parliament that a committee be formed to draft a new constitution during his state of the union address on Thursday. Yushchenko has been in conflict with parliament after rejecting their vote to dissolve his government last month, and has criticized constitutional changes that have limited his authority [...]

The White House on Wednesday said it has serious concerns over parts of the proposed Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act , which is currently being debated in the US Senate . The bill, if passed, would establish a $140 billion fund financed by asbestos manufacturers, users, and insurers to pay claims brought by victims [...]

Officials from the joint UN-Cambodia Khmer Rouge Genocide Tribunal being set up to try former Khmer Rouge leaders said Thursday that the first trials should begin in 2007. Though no specific trial dates have been set and the tribunal still has not secured all of its $56.3 million budget , UN trial coordinator Michelle Lee [...]

Racially-motivated riots again erupted at a Los Angeles County jail on Wednesday, leaving 22 inmates injured. The fighting at Pitchess Detention Center began when inmates at a group dorm were separated along racial lines. The violence was quickly brought under control, but then fights spread to other dorms. All seven Los Angeles County jails were [...]

Leading Thursday's international brief, in one of the first directly anti-monarchial protests recorded in Nepal , over one thousand Nepalese citizens gathered to protest the death of a Nepalese protestor on Wednesday at the hands of the Royal Nepal Army as the government released the body to the protester's family. Earlier on Thursday, over four [...]

The number of detainees still on hunger strike at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay has dropped to four, military officials said Wednesday. The head military spokesman at Guantanamo also said that prison officials have been using tougher force-feeding measures, including strapping prisoners into "restraint chairs" for extended periods of time to enable them [...]

US Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) , chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday that he is working on legislation that would require court supervision of President Bush's domestic surveillance program . The bill would allow the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) , established under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act , to conduct a [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Geoffrey S. Corn, Lt. Col. US Army (Ret.) and former Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters, now a professor at South Texas College of Law, says that the limits of the law of war need to be respected by civilian policymakers not just out of deference [...]

The conservative Italian government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has pushed through new legislation putting marijuana (cannabis) on par with cocaine and heroine and ending the legal distinction between 'soft' and 'hard' drugs, effectively recriminalizing marijuana use in the country. The law, approved in the Italian Parliament in a confidence vote, provides for strict sanctions [...]

Statistics published this week show that almost 400 euthanasia cases were reported in Belgium in 2005, almost double the level when the Belgian parliament adopted controversial legislation authorizing the practice in 2002. Wim Distelmans, chairman of the Federal Evaluation and Control Commission responsible for receiving reports from doctors and for compiling annual statistics, says that [...]