Anna Baggio : "The fact that Ontario's antiquated mining legislation was cited as part of problem at the heart of Ardoch Algonquins case is significant. It reinforces, for me, the need for a massive overhaul of Ontario's Mining Act including the "free entry system." It also reinforces for me the need to bring mining legislation [...]

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Karel Schwarzenberg Tuesday signed an agreement allowing the US to install ballistic missile radar systems in the Czech Republic, prompting an immediate Russian threat of a "military-technical" response if the deal is implemented. The two signatories worked out most of the details of [...]

The upper house of the Dutch parliament voted 50-15 Tuesday to approve the EU reform treaty , formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon . Last month, Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said that he would press on with ratification, even after Irish voters rejected the treaty in a referendum earlier that month. The [...]

Gregg Cunningham : "Why does it matter that hecklers be denied a veto over offensive speech? Social injustice will always flourish where it is ignored and trivialized. Oppressors are most ruthless when their abuses can be concealed. It is, therefore, the responsibility of social reformers to drag these travesties out of the darkness and into [...]

An en-banc panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Wednesday released a ruling granting broad deference to the National Forest Service (NFS) when making decisions regarding the impact of logging on national forests. The ruling comes in a case brought by environmental groups Lands Council and the Wild West Institute to [...]

The US Department of Health and Human Services Monday hosted a discussion with genetic scientists, advocates and direct-to-consumer (DTC) genome mapping companies Navigenics, DeCode Genetics, and 23andMe to discuss regulatory concerns. DTC genetic testing allows members of the public to obtain genetic data about themselves, usually to look for potential health risks, but does not [...]

Genocide suspects held at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) will now be able to receive conjugal visits, court officials said Saturday. Court spokesman Roland Amoussouga said that the new policy would bring the court's practices more in line with those of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , which has [...]

An apparent assassination attempt against Palestinian Authority Attorney General Ahmed al-Moghani failed in the West Bank town of Ramallah Tuesday when a bomb placed in his car exploded as he stood several feet away. Al-Moghani was not injured in the blast. It is not yet clear who was responsible for the attack, but Palestinian security [...]

US President George W. Bush called on Congress Tuesday to reject amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would deny telecom companies retroactive immunity for participating in the NSA warrantless surveillance program . In a letter sent to Senate Majority leader Harry Reid on Monday, Director of National Intelligence Jack McConnell and Attorney [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Tuesday ruled that the government can require convicts to receive injections of anti-psychotic medication as a condition of their supervised release. Philip Holman repeatedly failed to abide by a condition of his supervised release that required him to take oral anti-psychotic drugs. A federal court in [...]