Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko said Thursday that officials who refuse to comply with his decree ordering new elections could face criminal prosecution . Yushchenko issued the decree Monday, ordering parliament dissolved and new elections in May over what Yushchenko has called "systemic violations of the constitution by the parliamentary majority." Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych [...]
Ecuador's Constitutional Tribunal on Wednesday upheld last month's decision by the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal to dismiss 57 members of the legislature. The lawmakers, who oppose a planned April 15 referendum to amend the constitution , had been reinstated by a judge last Thursday. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal responded immediately by firing the judge , [...]
The Florida Board of Executive Clemency on Thursday voted 3-1 to change the Rules of Executive Clemency so that non-violent felons will automatically have their civil rights restored upon release from prison, and released violent offenders can have theirs restored after a board hearing or other type of review. The changes take effect immediately. Board [...]
New Hampshire's House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday to allow civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, placing the state in line to become fourth in the country to allow such relationships. The large Democratic majority in the House propelled the 243-129 vote , but Democrats hold only a narrow majority in the state [...]
Ali Khan : "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving on the right path in exploring the possibilities of negotiated solutions to the problems that threaten the peace of the Middle East. Her bold initiative to meet with two Muslim rulers, the Syrian President and the Saudi King, is in line with the UN Charter and [...]
John M. "Mike" McConnell , who succeeded John Negroponte as US Director of National Intelligence in February, delivered a policy address to the 2007 Excellence in Government Conference Wednesday criticizing federal surveillance laws as outdated and unresponsive to terrorist threats. McConnell, who previously served as the director of the National Security Agency (NSA) from 1992 [...]
The Constitutional Court of Uganda Thursday rejected a law criminalizing adultery by women and parts of an estate law according greater rights to surviving husbands than to surviving wives. The adultery legislation effectively permitted married men to engage in extramarital affairs with unmarried women, but punished married women with fines or up to 12 years' [...]
Iraq has lost $8 billion through corruption over the past three years, Radi al-Radhi, the head of Iraq's public corruption commission, told AP Wednesday. Al-Radhi said his office has investigated 2,600 cases of wasted or stolen public funds, and blamed a clause of the Iraqi constitution for allowing cabinet ministers to block investigations. The Commission [...]
Amnesty International decried worsening conditions at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in a report released Thursday, claiming detainees have "suffered harsh treatment throughout their detention, confined to mesh cages or maximum security cells" and that the new facility opened late last year subjects detainees to "even harsher and apparently more permanent conditions of [...]
The family of John Walker Lindh said Wednesday that a clemency petition has been filed on their son's behalf, seeking to reduce his 20-year sentence in light of the nine-month sentence handed down to Australian David Hicks last week. Lindh, the American caught fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, pleaded guilty in 2002 [...]
