Both houses of the Kazakhstan Parliament Friday voted unanimously to amend the constitution to authorize a referendum that would extend the term of President Nursultan Nazarbayev to 2020, bypassing two presidential elections. The vote overruled Nazarbayev’s decision last week to veto the proposed referendum . Nazarbayev’s current term is set to expire in 2012 , [...]

A federal judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Thursday dismissed a request by the Ensco Offshore Company to end an alleged delay in the issuance of drilling permits. US District Judge Martin Feldman said it is unclear if the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Thursday urged the Tunisian government to investigate the recent deaths of public protestors and called on government security forces to admit use of excessive force against them. According to government statistics, at least 21 civilians have been killed since the protests over unemployment and rising food [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Thursday urged the United Nations (UN) not to aid alleged international war criminals after they provided transportation to Amhad Harun , whose arrest warrant was issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2007 for war crimes related to the ongoing violence in Darfur . According to AI, the UN Mission [...]

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt sent a letter on Wednesday to Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi requesting that Florida add Kansas as an additional party plaintiff to its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the recently enacted health care reform law . Expressing his desire to challenge the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care [...]

Bob Edgar : “The fall of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is a well-timed warning to the House’s new GOP leaders — and Democrats too — about what can happen when lawmakers put themselves and their pursuit of power above the law. DeLay, once known in Washington as “The Hammer,” was the Capitol’s foremost [...]

The number of free countries and electoral democracies dropped and the overall freedom in the Middle East and North Africa suffered for the fifth year, according to a report released Thursday by the US-based rights group Freedom House . The group’s annual assessment, Freedom in the World 2011 , reports that 25 countries showed significant [...]

A US bankruptcy judge approved a historic settlement on Thursday with the estate of Jeffry Picower, a friend and investor of fraudulent financier Bernard Madoff . As part of the approved settlement, Picower’s widow, Barbara, has agreed to forfeit an unprecedented $7.2 billion to Trustee Irving Picard to be returned to victims of the multi-billion [...]

Brittany Haglund, Widener Law ’11, is President of Widener’s Military Law Society and a military spouse. She writes about Congress’ recent repeal of President Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy… On December 18, 2010, Congress voted to repeal President Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (DADT). Six days later, a smiling President Obama signed the [...]

A New York State Supreme Court judge on Monday ruled that the New York City Department of Education may release performance data on 12,000 city teachers. The order permits the Department of Education to comply with requests for Teacher Data Reports (TDRs) containing teacher names recently made by several media outlets under New York’s Freedom [...]