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 [...]

Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman ruled Wednesday that Saddam Hussein will be permitted to testify on behalf of a co-defendant when his trial before the Iraqi High Criminal Court resumes on Monday. Abdel-Rahman said that defense lawyers can ask Hussein questions about the involvement of Taha Yassin Ramadan in the deaths of nine villagers, torture of women [...]

Judge Constance Russell of Fulton County Superior Court in Georgia has ruled that the state's same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional because the state constitutional amendment violates the single-subject rule, which prohibits voters from deciding more than one issue at a time. The amendment defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, explicitly [...]

The Nigerian Senate on Tuesday defeated a bill to amend the Nigerian constitution that would have allowed current President Olusegun Obasanjo to run for a third term in office. The bill, which failed to receive the necessary two-thirds vote for passage, was proposed by supporters of Obasanjo who claimed that a third term was necessary [...]

The intelligence committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives will receive a full briefing on the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program , committee chairmen said Tuesday. In preparation for the confirmation hearings on the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden as CIA chief, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) , who has [...]

Verizon Communications said Tuesday that it did not turn over phone records to the National Security Agency (NSA) , nor was it asked to do so, as was reported last week. The denial from Verizon follows an announcement from BellSouth that it could not find evidence that it was involved in the program. Of the [...]

In a decision that some observers have hailed as a victory for "health tourism", the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Tuesday that domestic health service programs must pay for patients who go abroad to another EU state to have needed surgery. The major criterion is the patients must be facing "undue delay" that [...]

The US Senate on Tuesday rejected a conservative amendment to proposed immigration legislation that would have required new US border security measures to be fully completed and fully operational before the government could implement a program for illegal immigrants to earn citizenship as proposed by President Bush during his immigration reform address Monday night. The [...]