The French Conseil d'Etat , the country's highest administrative tribunal, held Monday that Sikhs have to remove their turbans to be photographed for driver's licenses as a matter of public security. The ruling overturned an earlier decision by the same tribunal made on procedural grounds in December, when the Council held that a directive by [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye has been found not guilty of rape by a High Court judge who ridiculed the disarray of the prosecutor's office in presenting jumbled and often mislabeled evidence and even implied that the woman accusing Besigye was dishonest, saying that while one might forget the day of [...]

US government lawyers on Monday asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two rights groups against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over detainee abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First filed the suit on behalf of nine former detainees , alleging that Rumsfeld and other [...]

UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke is expected to propose legislation that would allow the use of wiretap evidence in British courtrooms, specifically in cases of organized crime and terrorism, according to British press reports Tuesday. The practice is already common in the US, Australia, and other European countries to secure convictions. There has been a [...]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Monday that her cabinet had approved a new bill to jump-start the biggest constitutional reform in Germany since 1949. The bill is meant to undo the entanglement of federal and state governments that was created after World War II as a check on central power and to speed up the [...]

UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke protested the failure of the United States to ratify the latest US-UK extradition treaty , ratified by the UK parliament in 2003, at a meeting Monday with visiting US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales . Since ratifying the treaty itself, the UK has extradited 12 offenders to the US, whereas the [...]

Legislative Line-Item Veto Act of 2006, White House, March 6, 2006 . Read the full text of the bill . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Supreme Court of the United States, March 6, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Beyond Abu Ghraib: detention and torture in Iraq, Amnesty International, March 6, 2006 . Read the full text of the report. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

UN General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said Monday that he is "encouraged" by the public support of five Nobel Peace Prize winners for the proposed UN Human Rights Council. Former US president Jimmy Carter , Costa Rica's Oscar Arias Sanchez , Kim Dae-Jung of Korea, Iranian human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi , and South African [...]