Texas Republicans cannot remove former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay from the November congressional ballot, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Thursday. Tina Benkiser, chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party wanted to take DeLay's name off the ballot because he now lives in Virginia, but the [...]
Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday accepted the nomination of political rival Viktor Yanukovych to serve as the country's prime minister, ending weeks of speculation that Yushchenko's rejection of the nomination would prompt a constitutional crisis . Yanukovych's Party of the Regions won the most votes in March parliamentary elections, but did not secure an [...]
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley Thursday signed into law a bill establishing an innocence inquiry commission which will review appeals by inmates who claim they have been wrongly convicted. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is modeled after the system in the United Kingdom and is the first of its kind in the US. Inmates [...]
US-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday that indiscriminate Israeli air and artillery strikes on Lebanese civilians cannot be systematically dismissed as accidents and called several of Israel's attacks "war crimes" in a new report . HRW has been investigating the continuing Middle East conflict by interviewing attack survivors, officials from Lebanon's government, [...]
German Chancellor Angel Merkel called the conditions in the remote Siberia prison holding former Yukos Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky "unacceptable" in a letter published Thursday, and said that the German government had called on Russia to respect international rights standards. Merkel made the comments in response to a call by Germany's opposition Free Democrats [...]
The new French iTunes copyright legislation went into effect Thursday, allowing French regulators to force Apple Computer to make its iPod player compatible with songs downloaded from other Internet music stores, and downloads from its iTunes service compatible with other players. The French Senate and National Assembly gave final approval to the legislation in June, [...]
Nepal's High Level Probe Commission Thursday questioned army chief Pyar Jung Thapa as part of the panel's continuing investigation of alleged human rights abuses during pro-democracy protests in April which brought an end to the 14-month direct rule of King Gyanendra . Dilli Raman Acharya, spokesman for the five-member commission, said 84 royal ministers and [...]
Four US Army soldiers charged with the premeditated murder of Iraqi detainees refused to testify during their Article 32 hearing Thursday, following the lead of several superior officers who invoked their right not to incriminate themselves at the hearing. The four men from the Third Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division – Sergeant [...]
A Malawian court Wednesday sentenced the former principal secretary in the country's Ministry of Education to two years in jail for "aiding and abetting the theft of public funds," making him the most senior civil servant to be sentenced as the African nation continues a crackdown on corruption. Sam Safuli was originally suspended in 2000 [...]
British anti-war campaigners have unveiled a legal campaign against the British government's involvement in the ongoing Middle East conflict , seeking to stop flights carrying weapons sent from the United States to Israel from stopping at British airports. Human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar said that by British authorities were facilitating attacks on civilian targets in [...]
