Riot police and blockades prevented former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and hundreds of supporters from marching Thursday to the home of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry , who has been under virtual house arrest since Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's November 3 declaration of emergency rule. Sharif and his supporters disbanded peacefully. Meanwhile lawyers [...]

Bolivian President Evo Morales has proposed a national referendum on whether he and the country's nine provincial governors should remain in office in response to accusations that the process of creating a new constitution has been illegitimate. Although the text was approved last week by the Bolivian Constituent Assembly , simultaneous protests in Sucre resulted [...]

UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on Thursday proposed extending the current time limit for the detention of terrorist suspects before charges are filed to 42 days, up from the current limit of 28 days. Smith's proposal follows statements made last June by former UK Home Secretary John Reid calling for longer pre-charge time limits , [...]

A Bush administration rule aimed at preventing urban forest fires was struck down as arbitrary and capricious by a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday, drawing praise from environmental groups . The rule would have exempted from environmental review any logging project covering less than 1,000 acres [...]

The number of journalists behind bars decreased from 134 in 2006 to 127 at the end of 2007, according to a year-end report issued by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Wednesday. China incarcerates the most journalists with 29 currently in prison, followed by Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, and Azerbaijan. The report also found that [...]

CIA interrogators may be restricted to using only those interrogation techniques explicitly authorized by the 2006 Army Field Manual if US House and Senate lawmakers succeed in adding the restriction to an upcoming intelligence funding bill, aides working on the bill told AP under condition of anonymity on Wednesday. Army interrogation guide Field Manual 2-22.3 [...]

Over seven million men and women were in prison, in jail or on probation or parole in the US in 2006, accounting for 3.2 percent of the total US adult population, or 1 in every 31 adults, according to a report released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday. Five million of those [...]

Alex Luchenitser : "On December 3, 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuitruled that the State of Iowa has violated the constitutional guaranteeof separation of church and state by providing tax-funded aid to areligious "rehabilitation" program operated in an Iowa prison. Inmatesin the program receive many special benefits that are not available [...]

A US military judge Wednesday denied a request by lawyers for Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan to meet with top terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, citing security concerns. Lawyers had hoped that the suspects, including alleged Sept. 11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed , would be allowed to testify that Hamdan was not [...]

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori will be sentenced next week for ordering a 2000 warrantless search on the apartment of the wife of former Peruvian Intelligence Director Vladimiro Montesino , according to a Wednesday press release from the Peruvian Supreme Court. Prosecutors alleged that the search was intended to uncover and confiscate documents that might [...]