The US Senate voted 53-40 late Thursday evening to confirm former federal judge Michael B. Mukasey as the 81st attorney general of the United States. The nomination was backed by the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week by an 11-8 vote. Much of the opposition to Mukasey's nomination has centered on his refusal to unequivocally [...]

Pakistani lawyers detained by the government under the declaration of emergency rule issued earlier this month by President Pervez Musharraf are being tortured, according to Asma Jahangir head of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief. In a statement issued Thursday, Jahangir, who is herself [...]

A resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the death penalty has been introduced before the United Nations General Assembly. Over 70 states have backed the proposal, which will be voted on by the Assembly next week. The draft resolution states that capital punishment "undermines human dignity," that "there is no conclusive [...]

Italy's highest court on Thursday upheld life sentences handed down to three former Nazi SS officers for their role in a massacre during WWII that left hundreds of Italian villagers in Tuscany dead. All three men are in their 80s and were members of an SS regiment that surrounded the village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema [...]

The military junta in Myanmar Thursday agreed to allow opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to meet with fellow members of her political party Friday for the first time in three years. The announcement came after UN Special Envoy for Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari left the country following his six-day visit during which he met with [...]

Malcolm W. Nance, a former Navy interrogation instructor and counterterrorism intelligence specialist, said Thursday that the practice of waterboarding "is torture and should be banned," during a hearing held by the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the US House Judiciary Committee . Nance said he both underwent waterboarding during his [...]

The man believed to be the commander of the Irish Republican Army was arrested Wednesday night and charged Thursday with nine counts of tax evasion, totaling $3.7 million. Thomas "Slab" Murphy is believed to be the chief of staff of the IRA. He was arrested by detectives from the Criminal Assets Bureau , a division [...]

The UK Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) Thursday published a report on its investigation into the fatal shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in a London Tube station by officers of the Metropolitan Police Service who mistakenly believed he was a suspect in the 2005 London transit bombing attempts . The IPCC report criticized [...]

Zimbabwean Attorney General Sobusa Gula-Ndebele has been charged with corrupt conduct for allegedly contacting a fugitive, Zimbabwean police said Thursday. Gula-Ndebele is charged with violating the Criminal Law (Codification Reform) Act for doing "anything contrary to or inconsistent with a duty as a Public Officer" and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted [...]

The man who shot and paralyzed former Alabama Governor George Wallace in 1972 will be released from a Maryland prison Friday, according to an alert from an automated victim-notification system Thursday. Prison officials have refused to publicly confirm the release date due to security reasons. Arthur Bremer , who has served 35 years of his [...]