The French yes and no campaigns on the proposed EU constitution officially began Monday with the two sides nearly deadlocked just two weeks before the critical vote on May 29. The constitution requires support from all 25 EU member states and a rejection from an major member such as France could scuttle the constitional project [...]

An Indonesian appeals court has upheld a two-and-a-half year sentence for Abu Bakar Ba'asyir , convicted in March for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings . The defense argued that the conviction wasn't based on sufficient evidence. The US and Australian governments had previously objected to the sentence, calling it too lenient. The ruling was [...]

Egypt Sunday denied a recent Human Rights Watch report accusing it of torturing terror suspects transferred there by the US. The organization had accused Egypt of torturing prisoners which it said were transferred there in circumvention of international law. Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said approximately 60 or 70 suspects had been transferred to his [...]

On a visit to Iraq Sunday Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the Shiite- and Kurd-dominated government to involve the Sunni Arabs – estimated to make up anywhere from 20% to over 50% of Iraq's population, based on different counting methodologies – in writing the country's new constitution. The recently-formed constitutional committee of the Iraqi [...]

After days of deadly anti-US rioting in Afghanistan , protests in other Muslim countries, and condemnations of American actions by civil and judicial leaders around the Muslim world, Newsweek editors have backtracked on their story of Koran abuse by US personnel at Guantanamo Bay that ran in the magazine's May 9 issue. Writing in the [...]

Lambeth, et al. v. The Board of Commissioners of Davidson County, North Carolina, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, Circuit Judge King, May 13, 2005 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Three Saudi reformers on trial for sedition and using Western tactics in calling for the institution of a limited constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia were sentenced to prison terms of six to nine years Sunday. Human rights observers and family members of the accused were barred from the courtroom when the judgment was rendered; the [...]

The Iranian parliament Sunday passed a measure encouraging Iran's government to resume the "peaceful use" of nuclear technology consistent with international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In referring to "provision of the fuel cycle for generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity" the measure appears to envisage the resumption of uranium enrichment, a major bone [...]

A federal appeals court Friday upheld a lower court ruling that the inscription "In God We Trust" above the doorway of a county government building in North Carolina is not an unconstitutional infringement of the separation of church and state. A panel of the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the privately-funded inscription [...]

A US military investigator has cleared a US Marine of murder charges in connection with the deaths of two Iraqi prisoners. 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano stood accused of killing the two prisoners execution-style on April 15, 2004; if convicted he could have faced the death penalty. Lt. Col. Mark Winn, presiding at Pantano's Article 32 [...]