The Kenyan Cabinet on Thursday authorized a 3.5 billion shilling expenditure to finance the transition to the country’s new constitution. The funds, roughly USD $43 million , are intended to facilitate implementation of the revised charter by the close of the current fiscal year. The new constitution includes numerous checks on presidential authority , among [...]

Secretary-General of Hezbollah Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah called Thursday for all Lebanese to boycott the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) , a probe into the assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri . A crisis is currently developing in Lebanon due to unconfirmed reports that suggest the tribunal is set to implicate members of Hezbollah [...]

The EU Court of Justice has reinstated a ban on the import of seal products, according to a ruling released Thursday rejecting challenges by Canada’s Inuit hunters and fur traders. Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009 , which recognizes seals as “sentient beings that can experience pain, distress, fear and other forms of suffering,” and bans all [...]

The head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) made a public statement Thursday defending the use of secrecy for protecting national security, but also acknowledging concerns over some of the agency’s adopted tactics. SIS Chief John Sawers addressed questions about the value of a secret intelligence effort and whether the public could be confident [...]

A Kuwaiti appeals court on Thursday upheld the acquittal of eight men accused of attempting to form an al Qaeda cell and planning to attack a US base 70 miles south of Kuwait City. The men were tried and acquitted by a lower court in May, with two of the men, Mohsen al-Fadhli and Mohammad [...]

The trial of 25 Shia Muslim opposition activists began in Bahrain on Thursday with the activists pleading not guilty to charges of plotting to overthrow the government and supporting terror cells. The activists said that they were working for an unnamed foreign government . The suspects, who have been under arrest since August, are charged [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) will decide whether to prosecute additional Khmer Rouge officers. Ban spoke to reporters after visiting a genocide museum in Phnom Penh, ending a three-day trip to Cambodia, and said that the ECCC would decide if there will be more [...]

The UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict urged the US on Wednesday not to imprison Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr . Radhika Coomaraswamy , through a letter sent to the US military commission at Guantanamo Bay, requested that the US treat Khadr as a child solider. Coomaraswamy stated that Khadr [...]

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday announced that it has ended an inquiry into internal policies and procedures at Google that led to the company inadvertently collecting data on unsecured wireless networks while photographing streetscapes for its Street View maps program. In a letter sent to Google’s counsel, FTC Director of the Bureau [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Wednesday refused to overturn a false statements conviction assessed against former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich . Blagojevich argued that his sole conviction of making false statements to the FBI should be thrown out due to claims of trial errors and prosecutorial [...]