EU foreign ministers wrapping up a two day meeting in Austria Sunday agreed to extend the "period of reflection" on the stalled European constitution for another year through the end of the German presidency of the EU in June 2007, but floated the possibility of re-naming the instrument in an effort to allay fears over [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller held a private meeting with representatives from major internet service providers late last week urging them to retain customer internet activities to combat child pornography. The meeting, reported by CNET, follows a speech by Gonzales last month at the National Center for Missing and Exploited [...]
The British prisoners rights group Reprieve has claimed that over 60 of the foreign detainees imprisoned by the US at Guantanamo Bay were juveniles under 18 years of age when captured, and that some were as young as 14. Reprieve told the Independent newspaper that 17 detainees on the latest US list were under eighteen [...]
Over 1000 UK service personnel have deserted since the beginning of the war in Iraq, the BBC reported Sunday. A total of 134 deserted in 2003, 229 in 2004, 377 in 2005, and 189 so far in 2006, up from 86 in 2001, and 118 in 2002. The UK Ministry of Defence disputes the figures, [...]
Iran has delivered a "bill of indictment" against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, which will submit it to Iraq's High Criminal Court, according to a joint statement issued Saturday by the governments of Iran and Iraq on the visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to Baghdad. The statement said [...]
Geoffrey S. Corn : "Media attention is once again focusing on the laws of war. Recent reports indicate that a criminal investigation is underway to determine whether members of a U.S. Marine unit should be prosecuted for "war crimes" in Iraq. The incident under investigation allegedly involved what some have characterized as a series of [...]
US Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a former US Marine now senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, said Sunday on ABC's This Week that Marine killings of up to 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November after a comrade was killed by a roadside bomb had been committed "in cold blood", that the initial [...]
The US Department of Justice late Friday filed for dismissal of two lawsuits brought over the National Security Agency's domestic wiretapping program , saying that defending them would require disclosure of state secrets and would be contrary to national security interests. The first suit , brought in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights [...]
European foreign ministers meeting in Austria Saturday held out little hope of substantial progress on ratifying the European Constitution next year during Germany's six-month presidency of the European Council, notwithstanding German pledges to move the regional charter forward if opportunity arises. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said the constitution could not be considered a [...]
The military government of Myanmar – formerly Burma – Saturday extended the house arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi for another year, according to a government source speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity. Suu Kyi met with a senior United Nations official last week regarding her detention, and members of her [...]
