Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II will resign his position with the US Department of Defense next month, according to an announcement from the DOD Monday. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates commented that Haynes' tenure as DOD general counsel was the longest in US history. Principal Deputy General Counsel Daniel Dell'Orto will serve as [...]

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The US Embassy in Minsk and European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner issued renewed calls Monday for Belarus to release all political prisoners currently in custody. US and EU officials specifically urged the release of opposition politician Alexander Kozulin , who was sentenced to over five years in prison in [...]

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US President George W. Bush Monday reiterated his support for a surveillance bill that grants immunity for telecommunications companies from lawsuits related to their participation in the NSA warrantless surveillance program . During a meeting with the National Governors' Association, Bush urged the House of Representatives to allow the measure to go to the floor [...]

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New International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz reiterated in a Sunday interview with Serbian news site B92.net that he will do everything in his power to ensure that fugitive Bosnian Serb leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic are arrested as soon as possible. In January, Brammertz said that finding [...]

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The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear three cases , including Arizona v. Gant (07-542) where the Court will consider whether "the Fourth Amendment require law enforcement officers to demonstrate a threat to their safety or a need to preserve evidence related to the crime of arrest in order to justify a warrantless [...]

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Khalid Sekander : "An Afghan university journalism student was recently convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death by an Afghan trial court for expressing the idea that polygamy may be an inappropriate practice under Islam. The sentence is on appeal, and, meanwhile a majority of the members of the upper house of the Afghan parliament [...]

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The Cuban National Assembly on Sunday, by a unanimous show of hands, officially voted Raul Castro , 76, to the position of president, and also chose Jose Ramon Machado Ventura , 76, as the first vice president. Ventura is known as a hard-line supporter of former President Fidel Castro, who resigned last Tuesday, and was [...]

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Chief Justice Ronald George of the California Supreme Court told the state's Judiciary Council on Friday that the Supreme Court is withdrawing a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at expediting death penalty appeals by allowing the Supreme Court to transfer death penalty appeals to the intermediate appellate courts, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. George had [...]

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