The upper house of the Kazakhstan parliament approved a constitutional amendment on Thursday to expand the powers of President Nursultan Nazarbayev . The bill, which was introduced to the parliament just last week, was approved by the lower house of parliament on Wednesday, and now needs only the president's signature to become law. Nazarbayev would [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday filed its first response to one of several lawsuits challenging the controversial new health care reform law . In a brief filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan , the DOJ defended the law, asserting that Congress acted within its powers to [...]
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) on Wednesday apprehended alleged Serbian war criminal Dragan Vasiljkovic in New South Wales. Vasilijkovic, also known as Daniel Sneeden, had been on the run since March 30 after the High Court ordered his extradition to Croatia. The AFP worked with the Dutch National Prosecutor's Office and the Netherlands' police agency [...]
The lower house of the Kazakhstan parliament approved a constitutional amendment Wednesday to expand the powers of President Nursultan Nazarbayev . The bill, which deems Nazarbayev "leader of the nation," grants immunity for acts carried out while in office. It also makes it illegal to deface images of Nazarbayev, distort the facts of his biography, [...]
Ukrainian prosecutors said Wednesday that they have reopened a criminal investigation of opposition leader and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko . The probe into accusations that Tymoshenko attempted to bribe Supreme Court judges was originally opened in May 2004 and then suspended in June 2005. Tymoshenko, who recently lost a hotly contested election to President [...]
A US military judge announced tuesday that the trial of Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr will begin on August 10 . Army Col. Patrick Parrish also ordered pre-trial hearings on the admissibility of Khadr's alleged confession to resume July 12. Khadr's pre-trial hearings were suspended last week so that Pentagon officials could submit him to [...]
The US court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Tuesday rejected a motion by former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to postpone his trial until the US Supreme Court issues its decision on whether the federal honest services fraud statute is constitutional. Blagojevich, who has been charged with federal honest services fraud, along with racketeering, [...]
Canadian resident Prapaharan Thambithurai pleaded guilty Tuesday to raising money for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the nation's first case involving fundraising for a banned terrorist group. Thambithurai admitted raising between $2,000 and $3,000 between late 2007 and March 2008, acknowledging that he knew part of the money would go to the [...]
The Oklahoma Senate on Tuesday voted 32-11 in favor of a bill that would require women seeking an abortion to complete a questionnaire. The bill, known as the Statistical Abortion Report Act, would require women to answer questions such as marital status, reasons for seeking the abortion, and whether the pregnancy is the result of [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on Monday ruled that the US Treasury Department must show probable cause for freezing the assets of an Ohio-based charity suspected of having ties to the militant Islamic group Hamas . Judge James Carr had previously ruled in August that the federal [...]
