Thailand Army Commander-in-Chief General Sonthi Boonyaratglin , the leader of the military coup that deposed civilian prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra in September, told CNN in an interview broadcast Friday that the martial law imposed on the country in the aftermath of the takeover would be lifted by the end of the year. He made the [...]

Italian Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli has demanded that the Getty Museum in Los Angeles return all the allegedly-looted Italian antiquities it is said to possess, and not just the 26 pieces of a total of 46 that it has already undertaken to hand back . Negotiations with the Getty over the looted objects broke [...]

Gory v. Kolver, Constitutional Court of South Africa, November 23, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The South African Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that same-sex partners in a permanent relationship have the same inheritance rights as married heterosexual couples , and that a surviving partner could therefore take by intestacy as a deceased partner's heir. It declared that existing South African succession law was unconstitutional and should be amended to add [...]

International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Thursday that the tribunal could start its first formal trial in 2007 if judges confirmed charges against Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga , and was almost ready to file charges relating to alleged crimes against civilians committed in the Darfur region of Sudan. Moreno-Ocampo was speaking to [...]

Baze v. Rees, Supreme Court of Kentucky, November 22, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The European Commission announced Thursday that Microsoft had filed new technical documentation with it in a last-minute bid to comply with a March 2004 Commission antitrust ruling ordering it to disclose information allowing non-Microsoft servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers. The Commission has called for third-party submissions on the filing, so [...]

Some 25,000 Rwandans gathered in a sports stadium in the capital Kigale Thursday to protest a French judge's issuance of arrest warrants for nine top Rwandan officials on suspicion of involvement in the 1994 downing of the plane carrying then-President Juvenal Habyariman , whose death triggered a genocide that killed over 800,000 people. The protestors [...]

Canadian Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined with Ontario Liberal Party Premier Dalton McGinty and Toronto Mayor David Mills Thursday to lay out the terms of proposed federal gun crime legislation being introduced in the Canadian House of Commons that would put the burden on serious gun crimes suspects seeking bail but guilty of [...]

Pakistan's Senate Thursday approved a reformed rape law that allows rape cases to be tried in either secular or Islamic courts, reduces the evidentiary burden necessary for conviction, and substitutes a fine and five-year prison term for persons found guilty of having sex outside of marriage. The Protection of Women Bill is expected to replace [...]