The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Wednesday ruled that an Arizona election law requiring that independent presidential candidates register earlier than those affiliated with political parties was unconstitutional. Presidential candidate Ralph Nader had filed a challenge to the deadline, arguing that it violated his rights to free speech under the First Amendment [...]

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Thursday told the European Parliament that the European Union (EU) should quickly resolve conflicts over the proposed EU reform treaty , formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon , so the body can move on to other issues. Sarkozy called on member states to ratify the treaty, but joined others in [...]

The Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) announced Thursday that it will investigate Australian mining company Oceana Gold for possible human rights violations at the site of a planned gold and copper mine in Didipio, Philippines. According to CHR chairwoman Leila M. De Lima , Oceana Gold has been involved in the destruction of local [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Thursday acquitted Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski of charges related to the deaths of seven ethnic Albanian civilians, but sentenced his former bodyguard to 12 years in prison. Johan Tarculovski was accused of directing the attack that led to the deaths of civilians in the [...]

Lawyers for Canadian Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr released documents Wednesday indicating that the Canadian government knew he had been mistreated at the detention center before agents questioned him in 2004. The documents include reports on interviews with Khadr, and were among those the government was compelled to hand over to Khadr's defense following a ruling [...]

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Thursday said the recent acquittal of Bosnian Muslim war crimes suspect Naser Oric by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) shows that the court is politically biased, and it should be closed before the expiration of its mandate in 2010 . Oric was convicted of war crimes [...]

Officials for the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday that they will revise the Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations to no longer induce waivers of the attorney-client privilege and to limit what sensitive information investigators may gather. The announcement was part of a DOJ oversight hearing by the Senate Committee on the [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday ordered a federal court to hold an evidentiary hearing to consider whether a man sentenced to death for murder might be mentally retarded. After Michael Wayne Hall was convicted of the 1998 killing of a 19-year-old woman, he claimed at state habeas proceedings that [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Wednesday affirmed the conviction of a Pakistani man tried for conspiring to bomb a New York City subway station. On appeal, Shahawar Matin Siraj (Matin) argued that the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure required police to produce reports memorializing oral statements that he made to an [...]

German border police arrested  Rwandan war crimes suspect Callixte Mbarushiman on Wednesday as he was preparing to travel to Russia. Mbarushimana, a Hutu, was an employee of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Rwanda during the the country's 1994 genocide , and was arrested in Frankfurt after Interpol issued an alert . He is suspected by [...]