EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said Wednesday that so far there is no evidence that confirms allegations that the CIA operated secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Frattini's comments come the day after the Council of Europe , Europe's human rights watchdog, said that it has gathered information that reinforces the credibility of the secret prison [...]
Iraqi border police seized a tanker Tuesday evening that had just crossed the border with Iran which contained several thousand forged ballots. According to an Iraqi official, the truck driver told police that at least three other trucks had successfully crossed the border into Iraq, but the official did not say what the driver meant [...]
AP is reporting that the US House has voted 251-174 to renew provisions of the USA Patriot Act that were set to expire at the end of this year. The reauthorization bill now goes before the Senate, where the legislation could face a filibuster. The reauthorization compromise would modify but make permanent most of 16 [...]
An additional 114 people went on trial Wednesday in Uzbekistan on charges stemming from the May 2005 Andijan uprising , which led to government troops killing as many as 500 protestors . The Uzbek Supreme Court has released a statement that 78 civilian defendants are charged with "taking part in terrorist acts" in the eastern [...]
Former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay said Tuesday that the company's former CEO Andrew Fastow was to blame for the accounting fraud that led to the company's downfall and that his trust in Fastow was "fatally displaced". Lay's speech at a Houston business luncheon foreshadowed his defense at his upcoming trial on criminal fraud charges , [...]
The debate over capital punishment in California has gained new momentum following the execution earlier this week of Crips gang co-founder and convicted murderer Stanley Tookie Williams . Both sides are wondering what impact Williams' execution will have on currently-scheduled executions and the future of the death penalty in California. California could execute at least [...]
A Tokyo High Court judge on Wednesday refused to overturn a lower court decision that denied compensation for unpaid wages for a group of South Koreans who were forced to work at a Japanese steel mill during WWII. Relatives of the forced laborers had asked that the Japanese government be ordered to pay 20 million [...]
The UN Security Council is considering a proposed resolution, offered by France at the request of Lebanon, that would widen the scope of the UN probe into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri to include other politically motivated killings that have occurred in Lebanon during the past year. The resolution, which would [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Tuesday convicted retired Rwandan army officer Lt. Col. Aloys Simba of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 25 years in prison . The charges against Simba stemmed from the 100-day massacre of over half a million in 1994. The Tribunal found that Simba supplied [...]
The US Army has given preliminary approval to a new set of classified interrogation techniques which are likely to cause a roadblock in negotiations over Sen. John McCain's proposed amendment on detainee treatment . The interrogation techniques are to be added to the new Army field manual as a 10-page addendum and this is the [...]
