The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday unanimously overturned a Quebec school board's ban on carrying Sikh ceremonial daggers at school, ruling that it infringed students' religious freedom under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . Gurbaj Singh, 17, challenged the ban after a school prohibited him from carrying the dagger when it accidentally [...]

A British judge on Thursday approved the takeover of a British shipping and ports company by the United Arab Emirates company Dubai Ports World , a move which could lead to the Arab company taking control of operations of six major US ports. A US company, Eller & Co. , had asked the court to [...]

The US Department of Justice Thursday sued the state of New York for violating the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) by not developing voting systems that enable disabled voters easier access to cast their ballots and by not implementing a statewide computerized voter registration database. HAVA, which was passed in 2002, gave states three [...]

A Ugandan military court-martial has reinstated firearms and terrorism charges against defeated presidential candidate Kizza Besigye after the military trial was postponed during elections . Besigye's lawyers said Thursday that they will ignore the reinstated charges and that Besigye will not appear before the court-martial. Uganda's Constitutional Court has already dismissed the military charges saying [...]

A US Department of Defense official Wednesday defended the government's decision in October to refuse access by UN investigators to detainees being held at the US prison base in Guantanamo Bay , and reiterated that the operation of the facility is critical to information gathering in the war on terror. Brian Del Monte, deputy director [...]

The US Senate has voted to accept changes to legislation that would renew the USA PATRIOT Act , setting the stage for a final vote Thursday to authorize the renewal legislation. In one of several votes Wednesday, the Senate voted 95-4 to approve a series of amendments to the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist H.A. Hellyer of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, UK, says that the worldwide controversy over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad is symptomatic of a new type of tribalism in both East and West … Every so often, a word that we all took [...]

The 25-member European Union (EU) has issued a statement of support for a draft resolution proposing a new UN Human Rights Council to replace the generally-discredited Human Rights Commission , which has been severely criticized for not preventing rights violators from using their membership to protect one another from censure. The US is opposed to [...]

The US State Department has asked Congress for $100 million for building prisons in Iraq, its only remaining large-scale reconstruction project in the country. State Department Iraq Coordinator James Jeffrey describes the exercise as creating “additional bed capacity of the Iraqi legal system.” Iraqis will eventually take custody of thousands of detainees currently held by [...]

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told the British House of Commons Wednesday that he hopes the US will close its much-criticized detention camp at Guantanamo Bay , but measured his words by adding that the US had justifiably opened it in response to the September 11 attacks. He referred to what he called a "judicial [...]