A letter from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have been instrumental in preventing the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society last month from making changes to the current control structure of the internet. The letter, co-signed by US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, was sent to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw whose [...]

Addressing the Dutch Parliament Tuesday, Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot called assurances by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the US does not conduct renditions for torture "unsatisfactory." The Netherlands has been reported as one of the countries in which CIA rendition flights made stop-overs. Bot nonetheless asserted that rendition itself was not a [...]

American Bar Association v. Federal Trade Commission, United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, December 6, 2005 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Khaled el-Masri v. George J. Tenet et al., US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, December 6, 2005 . Read the full text of the complaint . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Wagnon v. Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, Supreme Court of the United States, December 6, 2005, 7-2 majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

California Supreme Court Chief Justice and Republican appointee Ronald George said in a Reuters interview Tuesday that the state should execute death row inmates within five years of sentencing or reprieve them, as opposed to waiting for twenty years or more as it does now. This issue has received increased attention in light of the [...]

A bill renewing the 2002 Terrorism Risk Insurance Act will be debated in the US House of Representatives later this week, according to acting House Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-MS) . The original law, passed after 9/11 and set to expire on December 31, 2005, required insurers to offer terrorism insurance but capped private insurance [...]

The Pentagon announced Tuesday that military commission trials for two foreign Guantanamo prisoners will begin with plea hearings on January 10 at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility without waiting for the US Supreme Court to decide the legality of such tribunals. The Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , where it will [...]

A Russian judge announced at a preliminary hearing Tuesday that three Chechens accused of murdering US journalist Paul Klebnikov in July 2004 would be tried in front of a jury during closed sessions. The man the Russian prosecutor's office believes to have ordered the killings , Chechen rebel leader Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev , is still at [...]

Natwar Singh , India's former foreign minister, resigned his position on the Indian Cabinet on Tuesday amid accusations that his majority party improperly benefited from the UN's oil-for-food program . Singh maintained his innocence on Tuesday, asserting he was stepping down to avoid being the excuse for the opposition to stall in Parliament. In November, [...]