Ecuadorian President-elect Rafael Correa renewed his pledge to redraft the nation's constitution in a speech in Quito Sunday. Correa, an economist who will take office Monday, declared that his first act as president will be to call a referendum to form a constitutional assembly to be charged with making "profound" socialist economic changes. Other proposals [...]

Former Maoist insurgents are preparing to enter their first session of parliament in Nepal after the Nepalese cabinet approved a draft interim constitution on Sunday. The party will hold roughly twenty-five percent of seats in the temporary parliament, which is set to pass the interim constitution and oversee elections to draft a permanent constitution. The [...]

The CIA and the American military have been accessing the banking and credit records of hundreds of American citizens suspected of ties to terror groups, the New York Times reported Sunday. Since 9/11 , the two US government arms have been using little-known provisions of the Right to Financial Privacy Act , the Fair Credit [...]

Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006, signed into law by President George W. Bush, January 12, 2007 . Read the full text of the Act. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

An Italian military court Saturday convicted 10 former SS soldiers and acquitted 7 others in the 1944 killing of more than 700 people in Marzabotto , a small town in nothern Iraly. The slaughter, which took place south of Bologna, is considered the worst killing of civilians in Italy during World War II. All of [...]

Bangladeshi authorities said Saturday they had arrested over 2500 people and raided the homes of several political leaders in a crackdown following Friday's swearing-in of a new interim government facing ongoing civil unrest ahead of elections. A national poll had been scheduled for January 22, but earlier this week Bangladeshi president Iajuddin Ahmed deferred the [...]

The US Attorney's office in San Francisco said Friday it is conducting a criminal probe into the option backdating practices of Apple Inc. , and specifically an option grant given to CEO Steve Jobs in 2001 which was considered one of the largest option packages in corporate history, according to the San Jose Mercury News. [...]

Don Gorton, Esq. : "The political victory achieved by opponents of same-sex marriage in the January 2, 2007 Massachusetts Constitutional Convention (both houses of the legislature sitting jointly) stemmed largely from dicta from the Supreme Judicial Court in a case in which the justices admittedly lacked jurisdiction. The Court, in a suit initiated by former [...]

Somalia's transitional parliament voted Saturday to authorize the government to declare martial law in the troubled east African country. The authorization and the accompanying declaration of a state of emergency followed Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Ghedi's Thursday call for the parliament to declare three months of martial law in hopes of reestablishing order following the [...]

China and Russia Friday vetoed a proposed UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to political repression and human rights violations in Myanmar . The resolution was jointly sponsored by the United States and Great Britain, but was blocked by the other two major powers on the grounds that it was outside the Council's jurisdiction, [...]