President Bush repeated earlier calls for a compromise immigration reform bill that would satisfy the demands of both House and Senate leaders during a press conference in Chicago Friday. After promoting the use of the voluntary Basic Pilot Employment Verification Program , an automated system employers may use to check the legal status of a [...]
A court in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg Friday threw out a ban on women teachers wearing religious headscarves . The case originated when Baden-Wuerttemberg passed a law in 2004 forbidding "outward expressions that undermine the neutrality of the government or peace between political and religious creeds in school," but which reportedly did not apply [...]
Former East Timor Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri was again summoned on Friday for questioning on July 20 by the lead prosecutor of East Timor, this time as a suspect, to answer questions in an investigation into the distribution of illegal weapons to local militias. Alkatiri refused an earlier summons last month, claiming immunity from criminal [...]
Japan circulated a new UN Security Council draft resolution on Friday, tougher than a previous draft resolution circulated earlier this week , that would direct states to take whatever steps necessary to prevent North Korea from obtaining materials that could be used in their missile program. The new draft, which has the support of the [...]
Robert Petit , the Canadian international co-prosecutor for the Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal cautioned reporters Friday at a Phnom Penh news conference that the court's investigation process, set to begin Monday, could take months to return its indictments due the complexity of the cases and and the novel structure of the court. The investigation will [...]
Rebels in Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rejected an offer of amnesty from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Friday, calling the offer redundant. Museveni promised rebel leader Joseph Kony conditional amnesty if he denounces terrorism and if upcoming LRA negotiations at the end of July with the southern Sudanese government proceed smoothly. An LRA spokesman [...]
An Italian judge ruled Friday that former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi should stand trial in November on alleged embezzlement, false accounting, tax fraud and money laundering charges in connection with a TV rights deals involving family company Mediaset . Preliminary hearings were held last October in the case following a four-year investigation into the [...]
An appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Friday increased the sentence for former Rwandan mayor Sylvestre Gacumbitsi to life in prison , revising his 30-year prison sentence , handed down in 2004. The ICTR convicted Gacumbitsi of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2004, in connection to inciting rape and [...]
The German Bundesrat , the upper house of parliament, approved a landmark package of constitutional reforms aimed at separating and clarifying the powers of the federal and state governments. The legislation passed the lower house of parliament , the Bundestag, last week by a margin of 428-162. The legislation marks the first major reform that [...]
Russian radio regulators have enjoined 60 radio stations from broadcasting material produced by Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , citing violations of licensing laws. Re-broadcast licenses were stripped from the 60 stations because, according to regulators, the stations failed to indicate that they intended to re-broadcast segments produced by the two [...]
