News stories by William Fisher, page 3

A clear majority of U.S. voters - 61 percent - would choose a punishment other than death for murder if given a choice, the Death Penalty Information Centre said Tuesday as it released the results of 'one of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted' of U.S. citizens' views on capital punishment.

The Egyptian government's crackdown on political opponents continues unabated in advance of parliamentary elections Nov. 28, even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week hailed the 'partnership' between the two countries as 'a cornerstone of stability and security in the Middle East and beyond'.

One year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced plans for a wide-reaching overhaul of the country's long-mismanaged immigration detention system, human rights and immigration advocacy organisations are charging that the government has yet to make significant progress toward the underlying goal of detention reform — a true shift from a penal to a civil approach to immigration detention.

After a three-year investigation, President Barack Obama's mantra — 'look forward and not backwards' — appears to have trumped the rule of law as a special prosecutor declined to pursue criminal charges against the Central Intelligence Agency operatives involved in the destruction of video recordings of interrogations of 'war on terror' suspects.

Putting local police on the 'front lines' of immigration enforcement is distracting federal agencies from their objectives by turning over people with no criminal history, or those who have committed minor or non-violent crimes, and setting them on a course toward unnecessary deportation.

Lawyers for the Barack Obama administration told a federal judge Monday that the U.S. government has authority to kill U.S. citizens whom the executive branch has unilaterally determined pose a threat to national security.

A new report on violent extremists in the United States finds that terrorism plots by non-Muslims greatly outnumber those attempted by Muslims, and that Muslim-American communities helped foil close to a third of al Qaeda-related terror plots threatening the country since Sep. 11, 2001.

In the face of police brutality, crackdowns on political parties and media, and a host of other violations ahead of Egypt's Nov. 28 parliamentary election, human rights advocates are calling on President Barack Obama to use U.S. leverage to persuade Egypt to reform its electoral process, allow international monitors to assess the election, and conduct transparent and accountable balloting.

A military jury at Guantanamo Bay sentenced a 'child soldier' to 40 years in prison — unaware that Omar Khadr's defence and prosecution lawyers had already agreed on an eight-year sentence and further agreed that the United States would send the Canadian home next year.

Will U.S. local law enforcement be forced to participate in a programme that critics say will put city police in the position of enforcing federal immigration law and, in the process, divert scarce resources from essential community policing, discourage immigrants from working with police to solve crimes and increase racial profiling?