Thailand Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont declined a request to declare a state of emergency in Bangkok Friday, although he said he had not ruled out the possibility of doing so in the future. Military officials had sought the declaration to crack down on critics of the interim government; emergency powers would have allowed the government [...]

Bangladesh on Friday executed six Islamic militants convicted in the 2005 murders of two judges . Authorities previously stated that the executions were scheduled to occur in April . The six militants, members of the banned Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh who admitted attacking judges because they want to replace the [...]

The Thua Thien Hue Provincial People's Court in Vietnam sentenced dissident Catholic priest Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly to eight years' imprisonment Friday for distributing anti-government documents and communicating with foreign pro-democracy activists. Ly had been accused of "harming national security" by advocating boycotts of Vietnam's upcoming national assembly elections, creating unsanctioned political parties, and [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers were deeply involved in discussions about the firings of federal prosecutors , according to testimony Thursday from former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson before the Senate Judiciary Committee . Sampson, who resigned earlier this month , said that staff made recommendations but Miers [...]

British resident and Iraqi citizen Bisher al-Rawi is scheduled for release from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay , according to a statement by UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett in Parliament Thursday. Held as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo since its opening nearly five years ago, al-Rawi will be returned to the UK as soon [...]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied Thursday that the Japanese government had pressured a Shinto shrine to honor war criminals after the National Diet Library released documents suggesting that the government was deeply involved in the decision. A document dated January 1969 shows the Yasukuni shrine consulted the government about listing the names of 14 [...]

The Maryland Senate passed a bill Wednesday to ignore the US Electoral College in presidential elections, instead awarding the state's 10 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Currently, the state's 10 votes go to the candidate who won the popular vote in Maryland . The Senate approved SB 634 by a [...]

A Japanese court threw out a lawsuit by a group of Japanese abandoned in China as children after Japan's defeat in World War II, officials said Thursday. Plaintiffs had alleged that the government was responsible for delaying their return to Japan by decades and, upon their return, denying them adequate state support. They sought 5.54 [...]

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora Wednesday called on US law enforcement to take action to stop the flow of guns and drug money from the United States into Mexico . Mora told a gathering of business leaders that many of the arms used in the country's drug related killings were smuggled from the US [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report Thursday detailing abuse and torture suffered by seven former Guantanamo Bay detainees at the hands of Russian law enforcement agencies since their release from US custody in 2004. The seven men were released from Guantanamo Bay after it was determined they had no ties to the Taliban and [...]