Members of the Parliament of New South Wales have been recalled and will convene Thursday to consider new laws granting police extra powers to react to the ongoing Sydney race riots . NSW Premier Morris Iemma said Tuesday that lawmakers in the Australian state, of which Sydney is the capital, will triple the jail sentence [...]

Crips gang co-founder and convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams died at 12:35 AM Tuesday morning after being executed by lethal injection at California's San Quentin State Prison. The execution occurred a day after California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to grant Williams clemency , finding that Williams had shown no remorse for the killings for which [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak admitted for the first time Tuesday that the recent month-long process of national voting for parliament seats and the Presidential office was flawed and should serve as a lesson to all of Egypt on what needs to be improved for the next national election. Mubarak denied that [...]

Retired chief justice for England and Wales Lord Woolf has criticized large-scale litigation by companies that often spend in excess of 100 million pounds on lawyers' fees. Woolf, a longtime proponent of mediation and alternative dispute resolution while on the bench, told the Financial Times that he viewed cases that cost millions of pounds and [...]

UK-based human rights group Liberty has said that remarks by UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw that the US had not requested clearance for any flights relating to rendition only served to demonstrate that the British government was turning a 'blind eye' to the practice. Straw said Monday that no requests by the US had been [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Chandra Lekha Sriram, Chair of Human Rights at the University of East London School of Law (UK) currently visiting at the University of Maryland School of Law, says that tensions between Europe and the US over American rendition policy and practice reveal a disturbing cultural chasm over the perceived significance of human [...]

Letter to certain US Senate Judiciary Committee members concerning the conference report on Patriot Act renewal legislation, Senator Arlen Specter, December 12, 2005. Read the full text of the letter.

Prosecutors have asked that the the trial of US Rep. Tom DeLay be postponed while they appeal the dismissal of felony conspiracy charges against him. Texas Judge Pat Priest threw out the conspiracy charge last week but refused to dismiss two charges of money laundering. DeLay is accused of funnelling $190,000 in corporate donations to [...]

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said Monday that outbreaks of racial violence that began in Sydney Sunday could undermine the country's strict new anti-terror law by making it more difficult for police to build bridges with Muslim youth who might already feel targeted by the legislation. On Monday, eleven more people were arrested and [...]

The Afghan government has adopted a plan to investigate war crimes and human rights violations committed from 1978 until the end of the Taliban rule. The Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice in Afghanistan comes after months of pressure from international human rights groups . Members of the new parliament are among those accused. [...]