Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday urged lawmakers to reintroduce a clause guaranteeing a certain number of legislative seats to Christians and other religious minorities into the country's controversial provincial elections bill . The bill had originally contained the clause, but lawmakers said it was taken out because of uncertainty on how to determine [...]
The Assembly of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) on Saturday revoked two lawmakers' prosecutorial immunity for crimes allegedly committed during the country's 2001 ethnic conflict. Hajrula Misini and Hisen Dzemaili , both members of the Democratic Union for Integration (BDI), the largest ethnic-Albanian political party in the nation, were allegedly involved in cases [...]
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Monday announced that he had named a prosecutor to determine whether criminal charges are warranted in connection with the removal of nine US attorneys, as recommended in a new report by investigators at the US Justice Department (DOJ) . Mukasey said he had named Acting US Attorney Nora R. [...]
Egypt's Abbaseyya Appeals Court on Sunday upheld the conviction of the former editor of weekly newspaper al-Dustour for spreading "rumors" about the health of Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak in an August 2007 newspaper report. Ibrahim Eissa originally faced a maximum sentence of three years in jail when his trial began in Cairo in October 2007, [...]
Judges for the criminal division of the Supreme Court of Chile Friday reduced the sentences of two men convicted of the 1973 deaths of 15 Chilean farmers . A lower court had sentenced former Army Col. Hugo Guerra Jorquera to 18 years in prison and civilian businessman Luis García to five years and one day [...]
The 2500-member People's Council of Turkmenistan Friday adopted a new constitution for Turkmenistan envisioning a new multi-party political process and providing for limits on presidential power two years after the death of longtime autocrat Saparmurat Niyazov . Turkmen leaders are hopeful that the changes in the country's charter would encourage investment in the Central Asian [...]
More than 30 US pastors planned to preach about the "moral qualifications" of political candidates Sunday, challenging federal tax laws that prohibit tax-exempt entities from engaging in political campaigns. The conservative Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) recruited the pastors as part of its Pulpit Initiative , which the group says is "designed to protect the First [...]
British music royalty collection society MCPS-PRS Alliance on Friday challenged a European Commission (EC) antitrust decision limiting the control such organizations have over copyright use agreements. In July, the EC ruled the current exclusivity deals the single-country societies had were effectively domestic monopolies in violation of Article 81 of the European Commission Treaty and Article [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana ruled Friday that the US Army will be able to complete its shipment of chemical waste from a location in western Indiana to Port Arthur, Texas, where the material will be incinerated. The Sierra Club and other citizen groups had filed the [...]
The head of India's Human Resources Development Ministry , Arjun Singh , said Friday that he advocates giving legal aid to two university students from the Jamia Millia Islamia who are suspects in the New Delhi serial bombings investigation. Singh's statement was in support of the university's Vice Chancellor, Professor Mushirul Hasan , who had [...]
