New York-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch issued a report Wednesday criticizing the US and other governments in the West and Middle East for sending Islamist detainees to Egypt, a country infamous for torture . The report, entitled Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt , tracked 61 individuals turned over to Egyptian [...]

Egypt's lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the Egyptian Constitution Tuesday setting regulations for multi-candidate presidential elections . The upper house had passed the regulations Sunday, which require candidates to be a member of a political party or receive a minimum of 65 recommendations from elected members of the lower house, 25 [...]

The Real ID Act passed the US Senate 100-0 late Tuesday as a rider on an $82B emergency supplemental appropriations bill funding military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. The controversial act , intended to discourage illegal immigration and increase domestic security, sets federal identification standards for obtaining state driver's licenses and multiplies the [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Dr. Laurent Pech, Jean Monnet Lecturer in European Union Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway, says that the proposed European Constitution may be less than it's cracked up to be, and that its possible rejection by French voters in the referendum slated for late May could actually lead to a [...]

Re: Cheney, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, May 10, 2005 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Tuesday that he hoped the Senate could take up the contentious issue of judicial nominations by next week. During a meeting with the press, Frist said the Senate could finish debate on a highway bill and on emergency funding for US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan by next week. [...]

State v. Ross, Supreme Court of Connecticut, May 9, 2005 . Read the court's opinion , a concurrence , and the dissent . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The newly formed Iraqi government on Tuesday created a 55-member committee that will begin work on drafting the country's permanent constitution by the August 15 deadline prescribed by the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) , the interim Iraqi constitution. The committee includes 28 members of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance party, 15 from the Kurdish coalition, [...]

Kenyan prosecutors on Tuesday dropped charges against three men for plotting the 1998 bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi that killed 224 people. The three, Salmin Mohammed Khamis, Mohammed Kubwa Seif and Said Saggar Ahmed, still face charges for alleged conspiracy in connection with the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel that killed 15 [...]

Russia and the European Union agreed to work on strengthening political and economic relations during a summit Tuesday, but the agreement was tempered by harsh language by Russian President Vladimir Putin on relations with the Baltic states. During a press conference following the summit, Putin said Russia was working on border agreements with Latvia and [...]