Some of the settlements were built without government authorisation.

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Three other judges also agreed that Mr Hamdi had such a right but went further in rejecting that the government had Congress's authorisation to classify prisoners as enemy combatants and thus detain them without trial.

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Labour says the government should not have included the authorisation for the plebiscite in the same bill as measures to reshape parliamentary constituencies: seats are to be made more similar in population size, which will erode some of the advantage Labour derives from having lots of small seats where relatively few votes are needed to win.

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Even authorisation of ordinary spending (the government lives hand-to-mouth, as most of this year's budget has not been yet passed) is being taken to the brink.

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Mr Hayes said the miners' leader Mr Scargill had failed to secure authorisation for the 1980s strikes via a ballot and had been confronted by a government which had stockpiled coal.

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Officials from the Antiguan government will make their plea before the WTO's dispute settlement body on Monday to get "final authorisation" to set up the site, Mark Mendel, a lawyer representing the island nation told the BBC.

BBC: Antigua applies for permission to run 'pirate' website