The Iraqi Parliament delayed a vote Monday that would have updated the controversial provincial election law it passed in September 2008. The proposed election law changes, which include ballots that list candidates rather than closed lists of parties, particularly affects the city of Kirkuk and is designed to make the election process more transparent. The [...]

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Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam denied any wrongdoing Sunday, promising to fight charges brought against him in one of the US government's largest insider trading cases to date. Rajaratnam was arrested Friday and charged along with five other individuals and two business entities with insider trading. The complaint alleges that the individuals, including [...]

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Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday agreed to a runoff election against challenger Abdullah Abdullah after the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) announced Monday that it had invalidated election results from 210 polling stations in Afghanistan's disputed August presidential elections . The EEC found clear and convincing evidence of fraud and also ordered Afghanistan's Independent [...]

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Khalid Sekander : "Mr. Barakzai resigned from the Electoral Complaint Commission (ECC) because he views foreign interference as a negative consequence to the Afghan democratic experiment. Meanwhile, Peter Galbraith, former deputy of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), recently stated that UNAMA head Kal Eide is favorable to the Karzai government by covering-up [...]

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The Honduran interim government officially eased restrictions on protests and opposition media Monday, two weeks after acting-president Roberto Micheletti promised to repeal the executive decree issued in September suspending several constitutional rights. The decree suspended five articles of the Honduran Constitution and was issued in response to protests being organized in support of deposed president [...]

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The Israeli government on Friday rejected a UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) resolution endorsing the final report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict . The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the resolution "one-sided" and called on the international community to join Israel in rejecting it, issuing the following statement:The adoption of this [...]

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