Taiwanese lawmaker Gao Jyh-peng of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) led by beleaguered Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian was indicted Monday on graft charges. Prosecutors allege that Gao, a close acquaintance of Chen, accepted $15,300 worth of New Taiwan dollars to help a company rent state-owned land. Gao disclaimed any involvement in the scandal, and [...]
Preliminary results show that a majority of Turkish voters have backed constitutional reforms put to a nationwide referendum Sunday. About half of the votes have been tallied and 72 percent of ballots have been in favor of the constitutional reform package , which includes reducing the maximum parliamentary term from five years to four; requiring [...]
A special FBI task force is reworking cases against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the other so-called "high-value" Guantanamo Bay detainees over concerns that information and confessions previously obtained by the CIA may be inadmissible in court, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. According to a source for the Times, the task force was formed as [...]
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 [...]
