The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal has dismissed a complaint alleging that the Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's incited hatred toward Muslims. The commission ruled Friday that a 2006 article by conservative writer Mark Steyn entitled "The future belongs to Islam" did not violate a provision of the British Columbia Human Rights Code that prohibits publication of [...]

The European Union Monday temporarily suspended its travel ban on Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and several other Belarussian officials following the first high-level talks between Belarus and the EU in four years. A meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg directed the ban be lifted in an attempt to encourage democratic reform and the improvement [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) Monday encouraged the Ethiopian parliament to reject the draft Charities and Societies Proclamation , which HRW officials concluded in a report would severely undermine human rights efforts in the country if passed. The draft law, which is a revision of the law proposed earlier this year , is designed to regulate [...]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has broadly interpreted rules protecting the content of databases from copying, regardless of how the information is extracted from its source. The court was considering a lawsuit filed by the University of Freiburg (UF) against Direct Media Publishing (DMP) for selling data CDs with a list of poems virtually [...]

The US Department of Defense (DOD) released a ruling Sunday indicating that Guantanamo detainees who represent themselves at trial are not entitled to Internet access and some computer hardware and software to aid in their defense. Military judge Col. Ralph Kohlmann wrote that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other detainees charged with planning the Sept. [...]

The Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Sunday approved measures that would liberalize the country's land use laws in an effort decrease rural poverty and increase the country's agricultural capacity. Under China's constitution , the country's land is either owned collectively or by the state, but the reforms would give farmers broader autonomy [...]

The US Federal Reserve Board Sunday approved a controversial merger between Wachovia bank and Wells Fargo that had prompted a legal challenge from jilted corporate suitor Citigroup . Encouraged by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) , Citigroup agreed earlier this month to buy out Wachovia for $2.1 billion but was effectively trumped by a [...]

A Kiev court Saturday blocked a decree by Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko dissolving parliament and directing parliamentary elections in the wake of the collapse of the governing coalition. The Kiev District Court made the ruling against the elections in response to a lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko against Yushchenko and Ukraine's Central Election [...]

The Portuguese Assembly of the Republic on Friday voted overwhelmingly against two opposition proposals to legalize same-sex marriage . The two proposals, introduced separately by the Left Bloc and the Green Party , failed to obtain any support from the ruling Socialist Party (PS) or the main opposition Social Democratic Party (PSD) . The PS [...]

The Alaskan Legislative Council on Friday released a report finding that Alaskan Governor and current Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act by allowing personal ill will to influence her decision to dismiss Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan. Independent investigator Stephen Branchflower found that Sarah Palin and her husband, [...]