Explanation of the draft Anti-Secession Law, Wang Zhaoguo, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), Tuesday, March 8, 2005. Excerpt: Using non-peaceful means to stop secession in defense of our sovereignty and territorial integrity would be our last resort when all our efforts for a peaceful reunification should prove futile. [...]

UK Registrar-General Len Cook Tuesday dismissed 11 legal objections to the proposed civil marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles that had been filed in their home towns of Chippenham and Cirencester. The Registrar-General is responsible for the application of the Marriage Act 1949 and hears all objections to marriage ceremonies proposed under the [...]

Radical Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir appealed the sentence of the South Jakarta Court Tuesday, following his conviction on conspiracy charges last Thursday in connection with the 2002 Bali bombings. Wirawan Adnan, a member of Ba'asyir's defense team, filed the appeal and told reporters that it was mainly based on the unreliability of the [...]

Vice Chairman Wang Zhaoguo of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress formally presented the draft version of China's controversial anti-secession law to China's National People's Congress on Tuesday. The NPC, China's parliament, will consider the legislation this week, and is expected to approve the draft code next Monday. The legislation has become a [...]

A major international anti-terrorism summit opened Tuesday in Madrid as Spain prepared to mark the one-year anniversary on March 11 of the Madrid train bombings {JURIST report], which killed 200 people and injured some 2000 more. Leaders in attendance at the International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism, and Security include US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and [...]

EU Enlargement Commissioner Gunther Verheugen has warned Turkey not to pursue legislation currently before the Turkish Parliament that would recriminalize adultery. Adultery had been struck down as a punishable crime by the Turkish Constitutional Court eight years ago as unfairly punishing women more than men. A criminal law reform bill before the Turkish Parliament last [...]

Responding to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York by survivors of the December 26 tsunami, a spokesman for the Thailand Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that his country rejected any legal liability arising from the disaster. "Thailand and its government agencies did not fail to perform their duties…The disaster was a force majeure that could [...]

A US military spokesman has told the Associated Press that the US may pull its security detainees out of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison due to the high number of insurgent attacks against the facility. The high-security prison, already notorious during the rule of Saddam Hussein, became additionally infamous in 2003 when evidence emerged of US [...]

Documents from investigations of alleged Iraqi prisoner abuses released by the US Army last week pursuant to an ACLU FOIA suit and made public Monday include a report on a army sergeant who after reporting abuses of Iraqi prisoners by US personnel was ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination and later sent out of Iraq [...]

AP is reporting that Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj has resigned after being indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. The indictment, anticipated yesterday but still not formally announced by the court, is in connection with Haradinaj's activities as a senior Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerilla [...]