Critics of a new draft Russian anti-terror law said Wednesday that the legislation recently introduced in the Russian parliament by pro-Kremlin legislators in the wake of the Beslan school massacre this fall is far too broad, and is unduly restrictive of public and press freedoms. The 50-page draft authorizes the declaration of a "state of [...]

Report of the International Advisory and Monitoring Board of the Development Fund for Iraq, International Advisory and Monitoring Board, December 14, 2004 . Read the full text of the report here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A federal judge in Ohio has ruled that the punch-card voting system used in Ohio in 2004 and, notoriously, in Florida in 2000, does not discriminate against voters using it. The ACLU of Ohio had brought a suit arguing that the punch-card system was more error-prone and discriminated against persons using it, many of whom [...]

AP is reporting that Time Warner Inc. has agreed to pay a $210 million fine to settle a Justice Department investigation of securities fraud involving its America Online unit. 11:20 AM ET – A full story is now available from AP here.

A circuit court judge in rural Alabama created a constitutional stir Tuesday by wearing a robe embroidered with the text of the Ten Commandments on the bench and insisting on carrying on with a trial despite objections by an attorney appearing before him who said that the display was distracting. Covington County Presiding Circuit Court [...]

The European Parliament in Strasbourg voted Wednesday to support the immediate start of European Commission talks with Turkey that could result in Turkey joining the European Union. The non-binding resolution passed 407-262. The MEPs did, however, insist on closely monitoring Turkey's progress in improving human rights, religious freedom and women's rights, and indicated that talks [...]

Russian oil giant Yukos, currently caught up in a titanic financial struggle with the Russian government over the payment of back taxes (see a Yukos release on the tax claims here) while its imprisoned former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky is on trial for fraud, has filed for protection with a US bankruptcy court in Texas in [...]

Stewart v. Blackwell, United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Judge David D. Dowd, December 14, 2004 . Excerpt: The primary thrust of this litigation is an attempt to federalize elections by judicial rule or fiat via the invitation to this Court to declare a certain voting technology unconstitutional and then fashion [...]

A high level UN panel set up to monitor the administration of the Iraqi oil industry and revenues under Security Council Resolution 1483 , granting the Coalition Provisional Authority the right to spend from Iraq oil money "in the interests of the Iraqi people", reported Tuesday that it had found "important weaknesses" in program management, [...]

Iraq's Defense Minister said Wednesday that Ali Hassan al-Majid, known in the West as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged responsibility for gassing Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s, will be the first of Saddam Hussein's top aides to go on trial, possibly as early as next week and certainly by January. Ali was [...]