Citizens of Kyrgyzstan voted Sunday in a constitutional referendum proposed by Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev last month. The proposed amendments to the Kyrgyz constitution include increasing the number of seats in parliament from 75 to 90 and changing the election of parliament members from a direct election to a proportional. Though Bakiyev has backed the [...]
The US Department of Justice has asked the US District Court for the Northern District of California to dismiss a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan on the grounds that the case would disclose classified information regarding the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) extraordinary rendition program. Jeppeson Dataplan, a subsidiary of Boeing , is being sued by five [...]
The military government of Myanmar Saturday lifted a curfew in the capital Yangon and ended a ban on assembly imposed during the junta's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests. The decision is the latest sign that Myanmar military leaders are confident they have quashed the largest pro-democracy uprising in two decades. In Washington, White House Press [...]
US District Judge Benjamin Settle Friday extended until November 9 a stay of court-martial proceedings against US Army Iraq war objector 1st Lt. Ehren Watada . Settle had temporarily blocked the court-martial, the second filed for the same charges, to consider whether the proceedings would violate Watada's Fifth Amendment rights . The stay was originally [...]
US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday became the latest high court member to publicly criticize the possibility of televising the court's proceedings. Speaking at the University of Virginia, Alito joked that televising the proceedings would be a mistake since it would directly compete with cable public affairs broadcaster C-SPAN for the lowest Nielsen [...]
US Army Sergeant 1st Class Trey A. Corrales, charged in July with the premeditated murder of an unarmed Iraqi civilian, waived his right to an Article 32 pretrial hearing Saturday. The decision came following the Friday Article 32 hearing of Corrales co-defendant Specialist Christopher P. Shore, in which Shore's lawyer painted Corrales as sadistic and [...]
Venezuelan human rights activists and church leaders Friday criticized new constitutional reforms proposed by President Hugo Chavez that they say would suspend legal due process and centralize power in an authoritarian presidency. The Venezuelan National Assembly is currently considering amendments to 25 different constitutional articles over and above changes already made to 33. One generally [...]
A federal district judge Friday dismissed a breach of privacy lawsuit against the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) . The Belgium-based international banking cooperative disclosed personal information about its customers to third parties, including the CIA and US Treasury Department. Ian Walker and Stephen Kruse said their privacy rights were violated because each [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Friday that an Egyptian student wrongly detained in the wake of the 9/11 attacks may sue the FBI agent who interrogated him. Abdallah Higazy appealed a ruling by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York which granted summary judgment to the [...]
The former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay , Col. Morris D. Davis , told the New York Times Friday that he was pressured to use classified evidence against defendants in closed war crimes trials for detainees. In the interview, Davis said the push to use classified evidence stems from an internal military disagreement over [...]
