The European Parliament in Strasbourg voted Wednesday to support the immediate start of European Commission talks with Turkey that could result in Turkey joining the European Union. The non-binding resolution passed 407-262. The MEPs did, however, insist on closely monitoring Turkey's progress in improving human rights, religious freedom and women's rights, and indicated that talks [...]
Russian oil giant Yukos, currently caught up in a titanic financial struggle with the Russian government over the payment of back taxes (see a Yukos release on the tax claims here) while its imprisoned former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky is on trial for fraud, has filed for protection with a US bankruptcy court in Texas in [...]
Stewart v. Blackwell, United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Judge David D. Dowd, December 14, 2004 . Excerpt: The primary thrust of this litigation is an attempt to federalize elections by judicial rule or fiat via the invitation to this Court to declare a certain voting technology unconstitutional and then fashion [...]
A high level UN panel set up to monitor the administration of the Iraqi oil industry and revenues under Security Council Resolution 1483 , granting the Coalition Provisional Authority the right to spend from Iraq oil money "in the interests of the Iraqi people", reported Tuesday that it had found "important weaknesses" in program management, [...]
Iraq's Defense Minister said Wednesday that Ali Hassan al-Majid, known in the West as "Chemical Ali" for his alleged responsibility for gassing Kurds in northern Iraq in the late 1980s, will be the first of Saddam Hussein's top aides to go on trial, possibly as early as next week and certainly by January. Ali was [...]
In a ruling much anticipated by members of the philanthropic community across the United States, a Pennsylvania court has ruled that the private art collection owned by the Barnes Foundation – said by some to the most valuable in the country worth somewhere between $6.5 and $30 billion – may be moved from its current [...]
Dan Tokaji, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University: "Think old-fashioned paper ballots guarantee election integrity? Think again. In a fascinating case coming out of Puerto Rico, the First Circuit Court of Appeals heard argument Monday over which ballots should be counted in the race between Anibal Acevedo Vila, who narrowly defeated Pedro Rossello, the [...]
Log of (and links to) new records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union from the US Defense Department and other government agencies pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents concerning the treatment and interrogation of detainees in United States custody, released December 14, 2004. Review the log of the latest documents [...]
A US Navy document obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act and made public Tuesday along with other records details 10 new and "substantiated" incidents of Iraqi prisoner abuse by US Marines, including one where Marines fired a pistol in a mock execution of four young Iraqi looters and repeatedly shocked another [...]
A military judge sitting at Fort Hood, Texas, Tuesday approved a request by attorneys for 1st Lt. Jack M. Saville to exhume the body of an Iraqi civilian, 19-year-old Zaidoun Hassoun, who is alleged to have drowned in January 2004 when US troops forced him into the Tigris River. Saville and Sgt. 1st Class Tracy [...]
