President Bush suggested Friday in a Chicago news conference that the US Supreme Court had approved the decision to establish a military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay by its silence on the issue. Bush also seemed to characterize the Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld as a setting of boundaries for future military commissions, instead [...]

Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz on Friday charged several former Guatemalan military officers with genocide, torture, and other crimes against humanity, and issued international arrest warrants for their involvement in atrocities committed during Guatemala's brutal 36-year civil war that formally ended in 1996, including the murder of eight Spanish priests and a 1980 military [...]

San Diegans for the Mt. Soledad National War Memorial v. Paulson, Supreme Court of the United States, July 7, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion per Justice Kennedy. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ordered Friday that a temporary stay against the removal of a monumental cross on city property in San Diego be continued until the Ninth Circuit hears an appeal on the cross's removal this fall. Kennedy issued the original stay of a lower court's order that a 29-foot cross honoring [...]

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services , part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, issued a final rule Thursday clarifying proof of citizenship required to apply for Medicaid benefits. The new rule exempts mostly elderly and disabled applicants who have previously applied for Medicare or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits from [...]

President Bush repeated earlier calls for a compromise immigration reform bill that would satisfy the demands of both House and Senate leaders during a press conference in Chicago Friday. After promoting the use of the voluntary Basic Pilot Employment Verification Program , an automated system employers may use to check the legal status of a [...]

A court in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg Friday threw out a ban on women teachers wearing religious headscarves . The case originated when Baden-Wuerttemberg passed a law in 2004 forbidding "outward expressions that undermine the neutrality of the government or peace between political and religious creeds in school," but which reportedly did not apply [...]

Former East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri was again summoned on Friday for questioning on July 20 by the lead prosecutor of East Timor, this time as a suspect, to answer questions in an investigation into the distribution of illegal weapons to local militias. Alkatiri refused an earlier summons last month, claiming immunity from criminal [...]

Japan circulated a new UN Security Council draft resolution on Friday, tougher than a previous draft resolution circulated earlier this week , that would direct states to take whatever steps necessary to prevent North Korea from obtaining materials that could be used in their missile program. The new draft, which has the support of the [...]

Robert Petit , the Canadian international co-prosecutor for the Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal cautioned reporters Friday at a Phnom Penh news conference that the court's investigation process, set to begin Monday, could take months to return its indictments due the complexity of the cases and and the novel structure of the court. The investigation will [...]