The European Commission (EC) said Monday that it will seek to keep restrictions on the US government's use of EU airline passenger information in the new agreement being negotiated between the European Union (EU) and the United States. An interim agreement signed in October 2006 and expiring in July 2007 gives the US access to [...]
Italian Justice Minister Clemente Mastella has said that he will refuse to vote for a proposed law that would give same-sex couples many of the rights that heterosexual couples enjoy. In comments over the weekend, Mastella called the proposal immoral and said that Prime Minister Romano Prodi's current governing coalition must not be made "hostages" [...]
The German EU presidency said Monday that it would support EU anti-racism legislation that would impose maximum one to three-year terms of imprisonment for "ublic incitement to hatred and violence for reasons of racism or xenophobia," but would not push for any law that would explicitly ban swastikas or criminalize Holocaust denial across the European [...]
UK Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Monday that rules under the Equality Act protecting same-sex couples' rights to adopt children without discrimination will apply without exception, denying special exemptions for faith-based adoption agencies opposed to same-sex unions and/or homosexuality. In a statement , Blair said: here is no place in our society for discrimination. That [...]
Iraqi-born Dutch national Wesam al Delaema pleaded not guilty Monday to attacks on US troops in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2003. Al Delaema now faces conspiracy charges for allegedly conspiring to participate in insurgent attacks on US troops in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2003. The US Justice Department announced Monday that [...]
The Wayne County Probate Court in Detroit, Michigan has scheduled a six-member jury trial for February 19 to settle the disputed estate of civil rights icon Rosa Parks , famously arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat at the front of a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man. Parks died in [...]
The International Criminal Court (ICC) confirmed war crimes charges Monday against Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga , making Lubanga the first ICC defendant to face trial. As founder of the militant Union of Patriotic Congolese , Lubanga is accused of enlisting child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo's violence-plagued Ituri district . Following a [...]
Anti-abortion protestors took to the streets in Lisbon, Portugal Sunday in advance of a referendum vote scheduled for February 11 in which voters will decide whether to ease restrictions imposed by the current Portuguese abortion law . The Portuguese Parliament approved the national referendum in October after the ruling Socialist Party proposed the idea in [...]
Lawyers for Nicolo Pollari, the former head of the Italian Intelligence and Security Services (SISMI) , moved Monday to stop Pollari's trial on charges that he was involved in the alleged 2003 CIA kidnapping and rendition of Egyptian cleric Moustafa Hassan Nasr . Pollari's lawyers argued at the preliminary hearing that the evidence proving his [...]
Libya is willing to release of five Bulgarian nurses convicted of infecting over 400 Libyan patients, primarily children in exchange for compensation, Seif al-Islam, the son of Libyan leader Colonel Muhamar Gaddafi , told the Bulgarian newspaper 24 Hours Monday. Seif al-Islam said the plan – designed to satisfy the parents of those affected as [...]
