The Australian House of Representatives passed the federal government's anti-terrorism bill Monday night, without amendments requested by a coalition Senate committee and by members of the Labor Party. The committee recommended Monday that a controversial sedition section be removed from the final draft and the sunset clause reduced to five years. Lawyers and academics have [...]

Arab news channel Aljazeera is considering taking legal action against President George W. Bush, after disclosures that the US president allegedly suggested bombing the broadcaster's headquarters in Doha, Qatar, in the spring of 2004. Last week, two British civil servants were charged with leaking a memo , in which British Prime Minister Tony Blair supposedly [...]

Lawyers for victims of Hurricane Katrina Monday asked for an extension of a program which houses displaced New Orleans residents in hotels at government expense, at an estimated $3 million per day, totaling $300 million since August 29. The request to keep the hotel program going is the latest filing in the class action lawsuit [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Stephen Griffin of Tulane Law School says that barely 4 months after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans and dispersed its students and faculty, Tulane Law is re-opening its doors in January and looking forward to renewal of the institution and its community… Tulane Law School will reopen to the public on January [...]

Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said Monday that Croatia may cease to function as a state if the government returns property to Austrian citizens that had been confiscated by Yugoslav communists after World War II as planned. During WWII, the Ustasa regime , allied with the Nazi party, governed Croatia and hundreds of Jews, Serbs and [...]

Documents released Monday by the US Justice Department show that Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. was actively involved in efforts to expand law enforcement powers while employed as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration's Justice Department. The memos show that Alito argued for stronger penalties for violent civil rights violations; [...]

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Tuesday suspended primary elections of his ruling Fatah movement amid election fraud said to be prevalent in Gaza and the West Bank. Primaries in the Gaza Strip were cancelled on Monday after Fatah gunmen stormed some polling stations alleging unfair voting. The primary elections were the first for Fatah and come [...]

Ecuador's new Supreme Court justices are set to be sworn in during a ceremony in front of the international monitors that oversaw their selection. The 31-justice court has been without permanent members since last December, when then-President Lucio Gutierrez disbanded the Court amidst allegations of it being biased against him. Gutierrez later had the Ecuadorian [...]

President George W. Bush Monday called for more stringent Mexican border controls and rejected the idea that his immigration proposals would allow amnesty for illegal immigrants, while at the same time vowing to keep the US "a welcoming society" and a "compassionate nation that values the newcomer." Bush's proposed temporary worker program has been criticized [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, the Nepal Supreme Court has issued a stay order preventing the Nepalese Ministry of Information and Communication from enforcing its decision to close down Radio Sagarmatha for carrying BBC's Nepal Service. The radio station's offices and broadcasting facilities were raided Monday and five employees were arrested on charges of violating the [...]