The French National Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to tighten immigration requirements for unskilled workers. The Senate is expected to consider the bill next month. If adopted, the measure would allow only highly qualified immigrants from outside the EU to obtain a renewable "skills and talents" residency permit. Such immigrants would have to agree to learn [...]
Members of a European Parliament delegation just back from a visit to the US told reporters in Strasbourg Wednesday that CIA officials had confirmed to them "that between 30 and 50 people have been transported by extraordinary rendition", but had indicated it was "not possible to organize extraordinary rendition such as this without the active [...]
Microsoft must abide by the terms of its 2002 antitrust settlement with the US Justice Department through November 2009, a federal judge said Wednesday. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly approved the DOJ's two-year extension request , which Microsoft had agreed to, during a status conference in US District Court for the District of Columbia . [...]
Jury deliberations in the trial of former Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling began Wednesday after government prosecutors and defense lawyers finished closing arguments. Lay and Skilling have been charged with multiple counts of fraud and criminal conspiracy for providing investors with false and misleading financial information from 1999 up until Enron filed bankruptcy [...]
Visitors to Japan will be electronically fingerprinted and photographed under a bill approved Wednesday by the House of Councillors , the upper house of Japan's parliament. Foreign visitors 16 and older will have their fingerprints and pictures taken upon entering the country beginning in November 2007. Permanent residents, state guests and diplomats will be exempt. [...]
A disciplinary hearing for two Egyptian judges who complained of alleged fraud in last year's parliamentary elections is set to resume amid renewed clashes between riot police and the judges' supporters . The judges, Mahmoud Mekki and Hisham Bastawisi, are scheduled to appear in the Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday, though the status of the [...]
The Supreme Court of Utah has ruled that the state's ban on polygamy is constitutional in a decision upholding the bigamy conviction of a former police officer. The court was asked to decide whether Utah's bigamy statute was constitutional as applied to Holm, a former police officer whose "spiritual" wife left him, telling authorities that [...]
Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez has said that if President Bush's decision to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the US-Mexican border results in a militarization of the area, Mexico would file lawsuits in US courts through its consulates to protect the human rights of Mexican citizens. The Mexican government is concerned that the [...]
Chinese Internet journalist Yang Tianshui, a member of China's chapter of International PEN , was sentenced to twelve years in prison on Tuesday on charges that he attempted to "subvert state power" by posting essays on the Internet in favor of a movement entitled the "Velvet Action of China," according to his lawyer. Yang's trial [...]
An unidentified attacker on Wednesday shot five judges in the Council of State , Turkey's highest administrative court located in Ankara. The wounded judges are all from the same court chamber, which deals with education issues and in February handed down a controversial ruling denying a promotion to a school teacher because she wore a [...]
