Canada's top court has sided with a British Columbia indigenous tribe in a case that could have wide-reaching implications for land disputes over traditional aboriginal territories.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday in favor of the Tsilhqot’in Nation, a tribe of 3,000 in the remote interior of the Canadian province, in a battle over a swath of land long sought for commercial logging.
The court decision hinged on the meaning of the legal term “aboriginal title,” which refers to the land rights held by aboriginal peoples as a result of long-standing use and occupancy.
Canada’s high court sides with First Nations in land rights case
If You Were An Iraq War Critic, You're Probably Not Being Asked To Go On TV
Kent Conrad’s phone hasn’t been ringing very much over the past few weeks, as Iraq, and the debate over America's future in the country, has once again dominated the news.
The architects of the Iraq war are back in TV studios and on op-ed pages, as are journalists and pundits who promoted the Bush administration’s ultimately bogus case for invading. But Conrad, a former senator who was one of only 23 to vote against authorizing the war in October 2002, hasn’t heard from CNN, MSNBC or any other TV outlet. "Not once," he said, when asked if anyone in the press had reached out regarding the current crisis in Iraq.
US Special Envoy to Middle East resigns
The U.S. special envoy to the Middle East is resigning after a breakdown in new efforts to make a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, officials said Friday.
Martin Indyk, brought on nearly a year ago as Mideast envoy, will return to his previous job with the Brookings Institution think tank, tweeted State Department spokesperson Marie Harf.
Report: Obama drone policy destabilizing for world, US democracy
Drone technology and the way the United States uses it has the potential to destabilize battlefields, governments and even American democracy, according to a new report by a task force that includes former U.S. military officials.
The report, released by the Stimson Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, surveyed the Obama administration’s use of drones and concluded that while they can be a powerful and effective force in wars, they can also interfere with the sovereignty of other nations and cause unnecessary conflict abroad. The report also suggested that the Obama administration’s secrecy surrounding U.S. drone programs is to blame for the public’s current misconceptions and fears about the aircraft, which are also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Judge upholds order demanding release of CIA torture accounts
A military judge has rejected the US government's attempts to keep accounts of the CIA's torture of a detainee secret, setting up a fateful choice for the Obama administration in staunching the fallout from its predecessor's brutal interrogations.
In a currently-sealed 24 June ruling at Guantánamo Bay – described to the Guardian – Judge James Pohl upheld his April order demanding the government produce details of the detentions and interrogations of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri during his years in CIA custody. The Miami Herald also reported on the ruling, citing three sources who had seen it.
Oklahoma inmates file lawsuit over 'unconstitutional' executions
A group of Oklahoma death row inmates filed a federal lawsuit against state officials on Wednesday, arguing their executions would violate the constitution and amount to human experimentation on prisoners after a botched execution earlier this year.
Lawyers filed the complaint on behalf of 20 men and one woman in the US district court for the western district of Oklahoma against the state’s corrections director Robert Patton, Oklahoma State Penitentiary warden Anita Trammell, members of the board of corrections and unnamed people involved in lethal injection.
Supreme Court limits greenhouse gas regulations
A divided Supreme Court blocked the Obama administration Monday from requiring permits for some industries that spew greenhouse gases, but the ruling won't prohibit other means of regulating the pollutant that causes global warming.
The court's conservative wing ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its authority by changing the emissions threshold for greenhouse gases in the Clean Air Act. That action can only be taken by Congress, Justice Antonin Scalia's opinion said.
Earth 'on brink of mass extinction event'
Earth is on the brink of a "mass extinction event" which could be equivalent in scale to the one that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a landmark study by an international group of scientists has concluded.
Researchers warned that deforestation, climate change, and overfishing have driven extinction rates to 1,000 times their normal level, Reuters reports.
Duke University biologist and conversation expert Stuart Pimm says that "time is running out" to avert the threat of mass extinction.
Bin Laden 'demon toy' and three other wacky CIA plots
The Central Intelligence Agency secretly developed an Osama bin Laden action figure whose face peeled off to reveal a scary devil beneath, according to an account first published this week in The Washington Post.
The 2005 effort was meant to produce a toy that could be distributed in Afghanistan. The point was to frighten children and their parents and lower their esteem for the then-hidden Al Qaeda leader, said the Post.
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