UK Prime Minister Tony Blair urged British members of Parliament Monday "not to compromise with the nation's security" by reducing a proposed legislative 90-day time limit for detaining terror suspects without charge recommended by London's Metropolitan Police. Blair's statement came minutes after Home Secretary Charles Clarke proposed a compromise amendment to the government's Terrorism Bill [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the Bush administration's use of military tribunals for foreign terror suspects. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld comes on appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which held in July that Guantanamo Bay detainees may be tried by military commissions , overturning [...]

A Syrian official said Monday that the country has received a UN request to interview six officials in connection with the UN investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri , and is considering whether to comply. While Syrian officials declined to release the identity of the six officials, the al-Hayat newspaper [...]

International voting observers and opposition leaders on Monday challenged the victory claimed by the ruling party in Sunday's Azerbaijan elections, saying that the elections were rigged. According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) , the elections did not meet international standards for democratic elections, despite some improvements. OSCE officials said that [...]

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan linked France's ban on the hijab in public schools to the country's recent rioting , in an interview Monday with the Turkish newspaper Milliyet . Erdogan blamed feelings of exclusion for stirring racial tensions and encouraging the violence which has resulted in more than 1,000 arrests, 36 police injuries, [...]

US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito is not likely to be filibustered by Senate Democrats, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) , a senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday. Biden said a decision on whether to oppose Alito's nomination would not be made until more legislators met and had a chance to speak with [...]

US Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said Sunday that the Bush administration is making a "terrible mistake" by opposing a proposed ban on torture and other inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody. The amendment, proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) , was approved by a 90-9 vote in the Senate last month and added to [...]

Several leading US Senators expressed concern Sunday over the FBI's use of a USA Patriot Act provision that enables the Federal Bureau of Investigation to access private phone and financial records. The Sunday follow a report in the Washington Post that the FBI is issuing over 30,000 national security letters yearly under the Patriot Act, [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist David DeWolf says that the Kitzmiller intelligent design case may settle whether the Pennsylvania school district that put "intelligent design" into its curriculum was acting under impermissible religious animus, but it may not settle whether teaching the origins controversy is actually unconstitutional… On Friday, November 4, the trial of Kitzmiller v. Dover [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Richard Edwards, Principal Lecturer in Law at the University of the West of England in Bristol, UK, says that the new Terrorism Bill presented to Parliament by the Blair government in the wake of the London bombings threatens the rule of law but promises little more security… The United Kingdom has sadly [...]