Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva Tuesday approved a law permitting abortions during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The Portuguese parliament passed the law last month after a February referendum on the issue failed due to low voter turnout . Approximately 60 percent of those who voted in the referendum supported a reform of the [...]

The Constitutional Court of Ukraine Tuesday delayed a scheduled hearing on the legality of an April 2 decree by President Viktor Yushchenko dissolving parliament and calling for new elections on May 27. Citing public threats against judges and political pressure, the court said it could not hear the claim on Wednesday, as previously planned, and [...]

JURIST has been recognized as an Official Honoree in the Law category in the 2007 Webby Awards . The 11th Annual "Webbys" received a record 8,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 US states. Only sites in the top 15 percent were deemed Official Honorees. This is the first time in the Webbys' [...]

President George W. Bush will sign off on a bill providing funding for studies on embryos incapable of further development, but will refuse to endorse legislation that would subsidize stem cell research , the White House announced Tuesday. The administration said in a formal policy statement sent to Congress that Bush would veto the Stem [...]

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg ruled Tuesday that a British woman could not have frozen embryos conceived with a former partner implanted without his consent. Natallie Evans and Howard Johnston entered an in vitro fertilization (IVF) program in 2001 and Johnson agreed to the implantation of the [...]

The position of UN Special Adviser for Genocide Prevention will be made permanent to solidify UN efforts against genocide, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced in a speech marking the 13th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide observed on Monday. Ban called on all nations to work together to prevent genocide, saying "Preventing genocide is a [...]

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Tuesday that the Malaysian government would not compel bloggers to register with the state, noting that existing laws and regulations were sufficient in case action needs to be taken against those who "cross the limits" by posting false information online. Last week, Energy, Water and Communications Deputy Minister [...]

The US House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Tuesday for US Justice Department documents relating to the firings of eight US Attorneys . In a letter accompanying the subpoena, committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) noted that the DOJ's "incomplete response" to the committee's request for documents "falls far [...]

Serbia's war crimes court found four members of the Scorpions paramilitary group guilty of murder Tuesday for their role in the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica . The charges were based on video footage shot by the four men as six Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica were shot dead. Scorpions commander Slobodan [...]

A federal judge Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss the terrorism charges against Jose Padilla based on Padilla's allegations that he was tortured while detained as an "enemy combatant." Padilla has said that that he was abused, threatened, administered either PCP or LSD as a truth serum, and subjected to sleep deprivation and stress positions [...]