Zanzibar election officials announced Sunday that voters have approved a constitutional amendment creating a coalition government. The amendment, approved by 66.4 percent of voters , will create two vice-presidential seats in the hopes of reliving political tensions between Zanzibar’s rival parties ahead of the October 31 general elections. The seats will be allocated to the [...]
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday announced the composition of an international panel to investigate the May flotilla incident , in which Israeli forces raided several Turkish ships bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip . The panel will consist of four members, including former New Zealand premier Geoffrey Palmer , outgoing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe [...]
A special Bangladeshi military court sentenced 14 members of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border guard Monday for their roles in a February 2009 mutiny in the northeastern district of Sunamganj. The tribunal, led by BDR head Maj. Gen. Mainul Islam, fined each of the men Tk 100 and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from [...]
A Malaysian court on Monday granted a defense motion to adjourn the sodomy trial of opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim for a week. The move comes after the defense tried to have the charges against Anwar quashed after allegations of an affair between a prosecutor and Anwar’s accuser surfaced. In adjourning the case until next Monday, [...]
The Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) officially went into effect on Sunday as binding international law. The CCM bans the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster bombs, weapons that break apart, releasing large numbers of smaller, self-contained explosives which spread out before detonating on impact. Unexploded components that fail to detonate present a serious [...]
US Trade Representative Ambassador Ron Kirk announced Friday that the US will file a case against Guatemala for labor rights violations. The case, filed under the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) , will be the first time the US has pursued a labor violations claim against a free trade partner. Addressing Guatemala’s [...]
The Constitutional Council , France’s highest constitutional authority, ruled Friday that French police may no longer hold suspects for 48 hours without telling them their rights or bringing charges. Since President Nicolas Sarkozy’s came to power in 2007 the number of people in France taken into custody and questioned without charge has exploded . In [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Friday denied the state of Arizona’s request for an expedited appeal to lift the preliminary injunction issued Wednesday against several provisions of a controversial immigration law . The court set a briefing schedule with the opening brief due August 26 and the answering brief due September [...]
The US Securities and Exchange Commission announced Thursday that it has charged Citigroup Inc. with misleading investors about the company’s exposure to sub-prime mortgage-related assets and settled with the company for $75 million. The SEC alleged that Citigroup “repeatedly made misleading statements about the extent of its holdings of assets backed by sub-prime in earnings [...]
The Supreme Court of Croatia on Friday upheld the conviction of former Parliament member Branimir Glavas , but reduced his sentence by two years. Glavas was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2009 for ordering the torture and death of Croatian Serbs in the town of Osijek in 1991 during the Serbo-Croatian [...]
