Flights carrying illegal workers caught in a federal raid in New Bedford, Massachusetts to a deportation holding facility in Texas were delayed Thursday after Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick asked federal authorities to stop the flights until the workers' children could be accounted for . The US Department of Homeland Security detained more than 300 people [...]
The Bangladeshi interim government issued a complete ban on political activities late Thursday, stating that "the government will take stern action against anyone who breaches" the order. The announcement, issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, expands the January 11 state of emergency order by President Iajuddin Ahmed , which prohibited street protests, public meetings [...]
Bolivian President Evo Morales told reporters Friday that his government has a desire to "renounce the recourse to war under the Republic of Bolivia's new constitution." Morales made the remarks following a meeting in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe , whose country already has a constitution with a pacifist provision imposed by the [...]
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry Friday "after receiving numerous complaints and serious allegations for misconduct, misuse of authority and actions prejudicial to the dignity of office of the Chief Justice of Pakistan." Musharraf has directed the Supreme Judicial Council , the oversight body of Pakistan's judiciary, to investigate the allegations [...]
Portugal's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic , loosened Portugal's strict abortion law Thursday to allow abortions in the first 10-weeks of pregnancy. The legislation still requires the endorsement of President Anibal Cavaco Silva to come into effect. In February, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates said he would look the Assembly to pass liberalizing abortion [...]
Britain's most senior judge assailed recent government sentencing guidelines in a speech Thursday, warning that minimums set in 2003 threatened to eventually fill up the country's prisons with "geriatric lifers" and would have negative consequences for years to come. Speaking at Birmingham University, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers , also expressed [...]
Six foreign medics sentenced to death in Libya will not be executed, according to Libyan Secretary of the Foreign Affairs Committee Suleiman Shahoumi, quoted by Bulgarian media. In December, a Libyan court found five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor found guilty of deliberately infecting 426 children with the HIV virus and sentenced them to [...]
A US Department of Justice review of the FBI's use of so-called national security letters (NSLs) and ex parte orders for business records criticizes the Bureau for ineffective management, monitoring and reporting of the programs. The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted the review under the terms of the 2005 Patriot Act renewal [...]
UN High Commissioner Louise Arbour marked International Women's Day Thursday with a stark message on violence against women , urging an end to impunity for what was paradoxically the "most common but least punished crime in the world" in an environment where "most States have largely accepted the international normative framework aimed at preventing, tackling [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told senators in a private meeting Thursday that the Bush administration would drop its objection to proposed legislation requiring Senate confirmation of all US Attorneys, reversing a rule change approved a year ago in the Patriot Act reauthorization allowing the Attorney General to replace removed US attorneys with permanent substitutes. [...]
