Thai Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtas said Wednesday that Thailand will remain under martial law for at least a month as a safeguard against political turmoil, while Gen. Sondhi Boonyaratkalin, who led the Sept. 19 bloodless coup , defended martial law as unintrusive on the daily lives of Thai citizens. The comments from the military follow [...]

A South Carolina Senate committee is contemplating state immigration reform laws that would regulate the hiring practices of businesses who contract with the state, state Sen. Jim Ritchie said Tuesday. The committee is considering a mandatory program for state agencies, their contractors, and subcontractors where the citizenship of all employees would be checked through a [...]

The US House Ethics Committee will hold hearings Thursday on the Mark Foley scandal . Former Foley chief of staff Kirk Fordham is set to testify about when he notified the staff of US House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) about Foley's inappropriate behavior. Fordham has maintained he notified Hastert in either 2002 or 2003, while [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Don Rothwell of ANU College of Law, Australian National University, says that while passage of the new Military Commissions Act in the United States presents new challenges for Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks, it also creates an opportunity for the Australian government to reconsider its erstwhile refusal to press for the protection [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Tuesday upheld a $10,000 fine levied by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) against a US man who willfully violated the 1990-2003 international embargo against Iraq to deliver medicine and other humanitarian supplies. Bertram Sacks sued OFAC , challenging the OFAC's ability to [...]

A new child labor law , which criminalizes the hiring of children under the age of 14 as house servants or restaurant workers , took effect in India on Tuesday. Offending employers are eligible for a maximum penalty of a year in prison and a $217 fine. Proponents of the law say it will encourage [...]

Nigerian Vice-President Atiku Abubakar was charged Tuesday with more than a dozen counts of corruption. The charges filed before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, a special corruption court that has the power to strip elected officials of immunity, were related to the alleged diversion of $125 million dollars of public money to private interests, as [...]

Lawyers representing the estate of former Enron chairman Ken Lay have filed papers asking US District Judge Sim Lake to rule on a nearly two-month-old request to clear Lay’s record , dismissing his 2004 indictment and subsequent conviction . In 2004, the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in US v. Estate of Andrew [...]

The whereabouts and fate of at least 40 prisoners captured by Canadian forces in and around Afghanistan and later transferred to local or US authorities since the invasion of the country by US-led forces in 2001 is unknown, according to a Canadian newspaper report. Montreal's La Presse learned about the handovers of the uncharged detainees [...]

Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) began hearing public testimony Tuesday, with several people testifying about the crimes and abuse that occurred during the country's 14-year civil war . One man testified that he was taken by rebel forces as a child soldier to help with terror raids around the country, while another explained how [...]