Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir Monday pardoned British school teacher Gillian Gibbons, convicted of insulting Islam last week for allowing her students to name the class teddy bear Muhammad. Last Thursday, Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation under Article 125 of the Sudanese criminal code. Gibbons had originally been charged with inciting [...]
Incoming Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Monday that he has signed Australia's instrument of ratification for the Kyoto Protocol , ending nearly 10 years of Australian opposition to the pact. Rudd was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Australia on Sunday, replacing the more conservative John Howard, who he handily defeated in the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Wes Rist of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that especially in the context of its troubled pursuit of Ugandan rebels, the International Criminal Court in The Hague might take a leaf from the book of the new Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and pursue a more cooperative [...]
Venezuelans have rejected sweeping constitutional reforms proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez by a narrow margin of 51 to 49 percent, preliminary results of Sunday's constitutional referendum showed on Monday. Chavez, accepting his first electoral defeat, acknowledged that his proposed reforms – which would have allowed him to stand indefinitely for re-election, handpick local leaders [...]
Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party won parliamentary elections Sunday amid claims of vote-rigging and fraud. United Russia won 64.1 percent of the vote according to preliminary results, far ahead of the Communist Party challenger with 11 percent of the votes. Election observers from the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Organization for Security [...]
Venezuelans went to the polls on Sunday to vote on a controversial set of constitutional reforms proposed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez . The two-part referendum will determine the fate of 69 proposed constitutional amendments that would extend the presidential term from six to seven years, eliminate the limit on the number of terms a [...]
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said at the end of a visit to Baghdad Sunday that the US will hold Ali Hassan al-Majid , better known in the Western media as "Chemical Ali", and two other former members of Hussein's former regime condemned to death by an Iraqi tribunal until Iraqi leaders have [...]
US Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte said Sunday at a news conference in Baghdad that Iraqi lawmakers must take advantage of what he called the "significant results" of the recent security surge and enact laws aimed at political reconciliation. Negroponte, who was US ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005, spoke [...]
The Egyptian government has released two Shiite activists held in Egyptian custody since October who repeatedly criticized the systematic torture of prisoners in Egyptian custody. Mohammed al-Dereini and Ahmed Sobh are charged with “promoting extreme Shi’ite beliefs with the intent of causing contempt of the Islamic religion” and with “spreading false rumors and inciting propaganda [...]
The Bush administration is invoking a secrecy defense known as Glomarization to avoid disclosing hundreds of documents concerning White House visits by former lobbyist Jack Abramoff , according to AP citing court papers filed Friday. The administration is relying on a 1976 US Supreme Court ruling in Phillippi v. CIA, a case which arose in [...]
