Australia is urging the UN Security Council to put Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe on trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against his own people. Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says that Mugabe has ruined Zimbabwe's economy and is a "terrible threat" to its citizens. As Zimbabwe is not a party to [...]

President Bush's "faith-based initiative" to get taxpayer funding to religious charities won a legal victory recently when a US federal judge ruled that religious groups are able to hire and fire employees based on their religious beliefs and practices, even if their salaries are funded by taxpayers. The case had been brought by eighteen Salvation [...]

Recently fired Ukrainian Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun is claiming his termination last month was a direct result of an investigation he launched into the expenditures of the wife of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko . Piskun was looking into the costs involved when US-born Kateryna Yushchenko-Chumachenko flew a group of her US relatives to Kiev on [...]

US Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has said that she will provide more details to the Senate Judiciary Committee after Republican and Democratic committee leaders requested that Miers resubmit her answers to a judicial questionnaire, which some members of the committee found insufficient in her first response. Committee Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter and ranking Democrat [...]

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser Wednesday voiced his strong opposition to new anti-terrorism proposals from current Prime Minister John Howard , which were leaked by an Australian state leader earlier this month. The laws allow up to 14 days of "preventive detention" and planned control orders, which Fraser argues will not effectively prevent terrorism. [...]

Australia has disputed suggestions by the US Department of Defense that the four years terror suspect David Hicks has been detained at Guantanamo Bay should not count toward any sentence he receives if convicted. Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer , in a rare break with US policy in Guantanamo, said he would oppose the US [...]

A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed half of a whistleblower suit filed by former US Attorney Richard Convertino, who alleged that he was retaliated against after cooperating with a US Senate investigation into the failed prosecution of four men on terror charges in the first major trial following the Sept. 11 attacks. US District Judge [...]

The US House of Representatives is expected on Thursday to approve a bill that will block various civil lawsuits filed against US gun manufacturers. Both Republicans and Democrats predicted that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act would be approved with bipartisan support, clearing the way for President Bush to sign the law. The [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Robert Amsterdam, international defense counsel for Russian billionaire and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, recently imprisoned for tax fraud after a long and politically-controversial trial, says his client's case is a call to the West to wake up to fundamental threats to the rule of law in Putin's Russia … The [...]

The Malawi parliament has adopted procedures for the impeachment of the country's president, who has been accused of misusing state funds and violating the country's constitution. Legislators approved the procedures late Tuesday in a growing dispute between President Bingu wa Mutharika and opposition politicians backed by former President Bakili Muluzi . Muluzi hand-picked wa Mutharika [...]