OTTAWA, Feb. 23 — Canada’s highest court on Friday unanimously struck down a law that allows the Canadian government to detain foreign-born terrorism suspects indefinitely using secret evidence and without charges while their deportations are being reviewed.

The detention measure, the security certificate system, has been described by government lawyers as an important tool for combating international terrorism and maintaining Canada’s domestic security. Six men are now under threat of deportation without an open hearing under the certificates.

“The overarching principle of fundamental justice that applies here is this: before the state can detain people for significant periods of time, it must accord them a fair judicial process,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the ruling.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that foreign-born prisoners seized as potential terrorists and held in Guantanamo Bay may not challenge their detention in U.S. courts, a key victory for President Bush's anti-terrorism plan.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled 2-1 that civilian courts no longer have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding the prisoners - a decision that will strip court access for hundreds of detainees with cases currently pending.

A legal and ethical bind has brought executions to a halt in North Carolina: A federal judge ruled that a doctor must monitor the condemned for signs of pain. But the state's medical board has threatened to punish any doctor who takes part in an execution.

The result: Gov. Mike Easley says no more executions until the state can "untangle this Gordian knot."

Challenges to lethal injection — namely, whether it violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment — have effectively placed executions on hold in 11 states. The question of doctor participation has figured in some of those disputes.

"It's an inherent flaw of lethal injection, that in order to be reliably humane, it requires the participation of a group of people who are under ethical constraints and considerations," said Dr. Mark Heath, an anesthesiologist at Columbia University Medical Center, who has studied lethal injection cases across the nation.

Iowa City Press Citizen 

With encouragement from local and statewide law enforcement agencies, Johnson County supervisors will consider a resolution next week supporting the repeal of residency requirements for sex offenders who have harmed minors.

Currently, those sex offenders are required to live at least 2,000 feet away from schools and daycare centers, a law local officials said is ineffective and leads to a false sense of security.

Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek said county governments are encouraged to approve a resolution to join with other elected officials in a united front against the residency requirement. The law would have to be changed by the Legislature.

"The intent of this was somehow it would protect children," county attorney Janet Lyness said. "What it created was a lot of people who didn't want to register anymore."

Since the law made it difficult for such sex offenders to find a place to live, some stopped registering or "dropped off the face of the earth," Pulkrabek said.

"To me, that is more dangerous than at least having an idea of where they are," he said.

The law "has caused us to lose track of, in the state of Iowa, hundreds and hundreds of offenders," Pulkrabek said.

Other counties already have approved resolutions similar to the one the Johnson County Board of Supervisors will consider, he said.

Both the Iowa County Attorneys Association and the Iowa State Sheriffs & Deputies Association propose a statute creating "child safe zones" as a replacement to the law, which would mean "looking at where people are going to congregate, not just where they're sleeping at night," Lyness said.

These zones would be areas sex offenders would be prohibited from entering, except in limited and safe circumstances, such as schools and child-care facilities.

Repealing the residency requirement does not mean Iowa would not be tough on sex offenders, Lyness said, because the Iowa Sex Offender Registry would still exist.