Turkish President Abdullah Gul Friday signed a bill banning smoking in government buildings, offices, bars and restaurants. The bill was passed by the Turkish Grand National Assembly earlier this month. The ban includes penalties for anyone caught smoking in a prohibited area or any company advertising or distributing tobacco . The ban will not take [...]
Prosecutors dropped all criminal charges Friday against former Canadian Red Cross national medical director Dr. Roger Perrault, who had been implicated in Canada's tainted blood scandal , finding that there was "no reasonable prospect of conviction in this case." Perrault's lawyer said that his client should never have been charged and suggested that he was [...]
Niger authorities will release on bail two French journalists charged this week with threatening state security, the journalists' lawyer said Friday. Reporter Pierre Creisson and cameraman Thomas Dandois will be released when each journalist posts bail for $22,000. Passports have already been returned to the French journalists, and once they post bail they can return [...]
A Serbian court convicted 26 members of Belgrade's "Zemun clan" and sentenced them collectively to 465 years in prison Friday. The Zemun clan once acted as a hit squad for former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic . Those convicted, including former paramilitary commander Milorad Ulemek, had been charged with 18 murders, three abductions and two terrorist [...]
North Korea has shown no improvement in its human rights record and still systematically tortures its citizens, a UN special rapporteur said Friday. Vitit Muntarbhorn and a special UN envoy visited Japan this week to assess the impact of the North Korean rights situation on that country. In remarks concluding his visit, Muntarbhorn condemned North [...]
Kenya's main opposition party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) said Friday that it would use economic boycotts and strikes to continue protests over the disputed re-election of Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki after ODM supporters clashed with police during three days of demonstrations staged across the country this week. Opposition spokesman Salime Lone said Friday that [...]
US House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) has scheduled a hearing for mid-February to look into White House compliance with the Presidential Records Act and to investigate the contradiction between comments made Thursday by White House Deputy Press Secretary Fratto that that no electronic messages had been lost between 2003 and 2005 [...]
White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto Thursday dismissed allegations that millions of electronic messages prior to October 2003 had been deleted, saying the White House had found no evidence that any electronic data had been lost. Fratto told reporters that: We have absolutely no reason to believe that any e-mails are missing; there's no [...]
Former CIA Director Porter Goss never objected to plans by former head of the clandestine branch of the CIA Jose Rodriguez to destroy destruction of videotapes showing CIA interrogation of terror suspects , Rodriguez's lawyer said Thursday. This contradicts reported Wednesday closed session testimony before the US House Select Committee on Intelligence by Acting General [...]
Spain's highest court of appeal said Thursday that 25 appeals have been filed against verdicts handed down against convicted participants in the 2004 Madrid train bombings , both from defendants and from victims, and that it expects to receive more appeals within the next few days. In November 2007, victims vowed to appeal after a [...]
