Also read: Eric Holder: No Hate Crime Protection for White Christians or Servicemen Sen. Patrick Leahy’s hate crimes bill, amending the National Defense Authorization Act, effectively passed the Senate tonight at about eleven o’clock p.m. EDT. A call for cloture, or termination of debate after thirty hours, was passed 63 to 28. Clearly, the Senate majority had spoken. Once cloture is invoked there... 

All wars have anthems for doomed youth. Afghanistan is no exception. At a memorial service yesterday, senior officers paid tribute to the eight British soldiers who died in the worst day of attrition since the Falklands. Of the three youngest, William Aldridge had a gift for friendship, Joseph Murphy was a fine artist and James Backhouse, who wanted to be a fitness instructor, could run faster... 

Chrissie Brodigan A Greenpoint woman’s altercation with a police officer over carrying her sick dog through the subway has put her out of a job. To recap: Chrissie Brodigan, a VP for Online Media at Plum TV, says that after she argued with Officer Joel Witriol while trying to carry her pug out of the subway, he arrested her, grabbed her breasts, and punched her in the back while saying, “If you’re... 

A German court said on Monday that 89-year-old former death camp guard John Demjanjuk will be tried for “complicity to murder” 27,900 people, in what could be one of the last cases of its kind. Prosecutors believe the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk helped herd tens of thousands of Jews and others into the gas chambers while a guard at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. Demjanjuk,... 

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites. Earlier this year Meir Dagan, Mossad’s director since 2002, held secret talks with Saudi officials to discuss the possibility. The Israeli press has already... 

As an American and Ohio resident for 57 years, as well as a Vietnam veteran, I, as well as many I know, were offended by the photograph and caption about the Somali Community Association of Ohio in last Thursday’s Dispatch, especially on a day so close to our Independence Day. The picture of a Somali flag being flown over the Statehouse is both unpatriotic and offensive to all Ohioans. Brave... 

The Conservative Party has announced it intends to dish out British taxpayers’ money with ‘vouchers’ while the Labour Party has announced that it wants to give away an additional £1 billion to selected Third World countries. The Tories want to pay for private schools in India – at the same time that the Indian government has spent nearly £2 billion buying tanks and its second aircraft... 

German industrial giant Siemens will pay $100 million over 15 years into a fund to fight corruption after probes revealed fraud at its subsidiaries, the jewish World Bank said. Siemens has also agreed not to bid for business from the Washington-based jewish World Bank for two years as part of its punishment following the anti-corruption investigations. “The World Bank Group today announced a... 

The far-right Hungarian Guard, a radical nationalist organisation, must be dissolved because in the past its marches have fuelled ethnic tensions and led to a disruption of public order, a Hungarian court ruled on Thursday. Politicians, human rights activists and Gypsy rights activists have criticised the Guard for staging intimidating marches nationwide to protest against the spread of petty crime... 

At least 85 Islamic sharia courts are operating in Britain, a study claimed yesterday. The astonishing figure is 17 times higher than previously accepted. The tribunals, working mainly from mosques, settle financial and family disputes according to religious principles. They lay down judgments which can be given full legal status if approved in national law courts. However, they operate behind doors... 

Germany’s highest court has upheld a ban on three words appearing in sequence because of their link to a former anthem of the Nazi party. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe rejected on Thursday an appeal by a member of a far-right party who was fined 1,750 euros ($2,400) for wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “die Fahnen hoch.” This literally translates as... 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday said the Senate needs more time to review the record of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor after new material surfaced from her time with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. “Just a day or so ago, we discovered that there are 300 or so boxes of additional material that has just been discovered from her time working with the... 

A Swedish court has thrown out a request for a retrial by the four men behind The Pirate Bay website. The four were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement in April and face jail sentences and hefty claims for damages. The Pirate Bay’s lawyers called for a retrial when it emerged that one of the judges in the case belonged to several copyright protection groups. The Swedish court said... 

Nine former SS men were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a Rome military court on Saturday for allegedly massacring more than 350 civilians in Tuscany in 1944, as the Nazis fled from the advancing Allies. The nine men are all aged between 84 and 90, and they are therefore unlikely to serve their sentences. A tenth defendant was acquitted and another died during the trial. In cases of... 

Five members of the Jena Six pleaded no contest Friday to misdemeanor simple battery and won’t serve jail time, ending a case that thrust a small Louisiana town into the national spotlight and sparked a massive civil rights demonstration. State District Judge Tom Yeager then sentenced the five, standing quietly surrounded by their lawyers, to seven days unsupervised probation and fined $500....