Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant has asked the Canadian federal government for the power to ban handguns, vowing to look to constitutional options if he is refused. Last last week Bryant criticized current Canadian firearms laws permitting collectors to own guns for sporting competitions as ineffective, due to "the dangers caused even by safe storage [...]

Amnesty International (AI) Monday condemned as "shameful" the British government's inattention to the plight of nine long-term British residents currently being held at the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba, and called once again for the camp to be closed. British government officials responded to the criticism by pointing out that while the [...]

UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron Monday urged a review of the traditionally-unilateral "royal prerogative" powers exercised by the prime minister in the name of the British monarch, including the powers to go to war, sign treaties, and change internal governmental structures. The party has set up a Democracy Task Force led by Conservative frontbencher [...]

American and European officials meeting in Munich Sunday at the annual Conference on Security Policy criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for backsliding on his protection of human rights. US Senator John McCain went so far as to suggest an international boycott of the upcoming G-8 summit to be hosted by Putin in St. Petersburg in [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law says Merck faces new legal difficulties as a retrial of the first federal Vioxx case begins… The retrial of the first federal Vioxx case begins Monday with jury selection. In December a jury deadlocked after deliberating for two days over whether Vioxx [...]

The House of Lords , the UK's highest court, hears arguments Monday in the case of a Muslim teenage girl who argues that a British school's decision to forbid her from wearing a Muslim jilbab to school was a violation of the UK Human Rights Act . Shabina Begum was 14 when she was banned [...]

Some 30,000 Israelis protested in Jerusalem Sunday against the recent demolition of illegally built homes on the West Bank, a move which they fear heralds the beginning of a new wave of government-ordered Jewish settlement evacuations under the administration of Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert . The destruction of nine settler buildings at Amona last [...]

Some US senators are discussing a constitutional amendment which would place limits on the power of the president during times of war, according to a report by TIME magazine Sunday. A source close to the negotiations told TIME that the amendment would give Congress the final power in evaluating presidential decisions that affect US citizens [...]

Jury selection begins Monday in Virginia for the sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui to determine if the al-Qaida follower should be given life in prison or a death sentence for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US. Moussaoui, a French Muslim of Moroccan extraction, pleaded guilty to six charges of [...]

Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh resigned his post Sunday after rioters protesting the Danish publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad set fire to the Danish embassy in Beirut . Sabeh had been criticized for failing to protect the building; he said that security forces using tear gas and batons had been unable to stop [...]