Officials in London have issued the first set of formal charges in the failed July 21 London bombings . Somali national Yassin Hassan Omar was charged Saturday with four criminal counts, including conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, and possession of explosives. Human rights groups in Britain have questioned whether any of the bombing suspects can [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist W. Michael Reisman, McDougal Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, says that the current debate over expansion of the UN Security Council is not as critical as many diplomats and activists make it out to be… Bureaucrats “securitize” matters they want to expedite by pretending that a failure to move [...]

The Indonesian Supreme Court held Saturday that the conviction of Abu Bakar Bashir was not made in error, upholding his 30-month sentence for conspiracy in connection with the 2002 bombings in Bali . Bashir is associated with Jemaah Islamiyah , a group the US alleges has links to al-Qaeda. BBC News has more.

Reaction to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's proposed anti-terrorism measures was mixed Friday and Saturday, with opposition politicians and rights activists expressing concern over the civil liberties and immigration implications of the plan. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Charles Kennedy, said on BBC Radio Saturday that there was "a lot that came out yesterday [...]

The US Department of Justice Friday refused a congressional request to turn over certain documents authored by US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts when he was deputy Solicitor General, saying that internal deliberations on the merits of cases are privileged. The DOJ did, however, agreed to turn over any documents reflecting Roberts' final position on [...]

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland in California has agreed to pay $56 million to settle a series of lawsuits filed by former church members who claim they were sexually abused by priests . The payout will settle 56 lawsuits, with nearly 750 civil lawsuits still pending against the Roman Catholic dioceses statewide. In 1999, [...]

Canadian Transport Minister Jean Lapierre announced sweeping security changes to Canadian transportation security Friday, including the creation of an anti-terror "no-fly" list similar to that created in the US under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001 . Lapierre did not provide details on the proposed list, but did comment that it "will identify [...]

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari met with several of the country's leading Shiite clerics in the city of Najaf Friday to discuss issues surrounding the Iraqi constitution. Jaafari said after a discussion with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that the senior Shiite celeric "does not want to impose dictation on drafting the constitution, but according to [...]

A jury in Virginia Friday found that Daryl Renard Atkins is not mentally retarded, and upheld his death penalty conviction. Atkins had been convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the 1996 killing of Airman 1st Class Eric Nesbitt; he later appealed his conviction to the US Supreme Court, arguing that he was [...]

Statement on Broadening Powers to Tackle Extremism, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, August 5, 2005 , anywhere, will automatically be refused asylum in our country"]. Excerpt: Over the past two weeks there have been intensive meetings and discussions across government to set a comprehensive framework for action in dealing with the terrorist threat in Britain, [...]