Eleven South Koreans filed a lawsuit Monday asking the Tokyo District Court to order the removal of their relatives' names from the Yasukuni Shrine , a controversial memorial which many argue is a symbol of Japan's past as a military-driven nation. The plaintiffs include a former soldier and 10 other South Koreans whose fathers were [...]

The Iraqi Oil Ministry indicated Sunday that a recently proposed law regulating oil revenues may be in jeopardy. Members of the ministry have expressed doubt that the Kurdish administration in the north of the country will approve the current draft despite making positive remarks about the law Saturday. Iraqi legislators delivered the law to Iraq's [...]

Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr said in a live television interview with Al Jazeera Sunday that he was "savagely tortured by the CIA when kidnapped" and taken from Milan to Egypt in 2003. Nasr, who has been at the heart of Italian judicial proceedings against US and Italian intelligence agents implicated in his alleged [...]

Lawyers for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks are filing a claim Monday in the Federal Court of Australia in an attempt to secure Hicks' release. Hicks' Australian defense team, headed by David McLeod, will charge the government with breaching its duty to protect Hicks, as a citizen, by failing to call for a fair [...]

The Virginia General Assembly passed an unanimous resolution Saturday apologizing for the state's involvement in slavery and the "exploitation of Native Americans". Virginia is the first state to pass such a measure but Missouri legislators are also considering a similar bill. The Virginia measure was introduced in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the [...]

Seven more high-profile persons suspected of corruption were arrested in Bangladesh Sunday as government officials announced that trials will begin in March as part of the nation's move to curb the problem. Last week Bangladeshi authorities published a list of several hundred people suspected of graft; the top 50 suspects, many of whom are prominent [...]

The US military lawyer for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks said Saturday that Hicks would spend years in court and could not get a fair trial before a US military commission. In remarks at a rally in Adelaide, US Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori noted that the revised military commissions system could not be [...]

The US government has refiled charges against US Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada , a US Army officer who failed to deploy to Iraq in June, after the military judge overseeing his court-martial declared a mistrial two weeks ago. The judge declared a mistrial after throwing out a pretrial agreement in which Watada admitted that [...]

The Washington State Human Rights Commission determined Friday that a heterosexual woman could not use the state's gay civil rights law to secure health care benefits for her male partner because a federal law on the topic trumps the state law. Sandi Scott-Moore filed a claim in August arguing that her employer discriminated against her [...]

The Democratic-controlled Montana Senate voted 27-21 Friday to give second-reading approval to a bill that would eliminate the death penalty in Montana. Third reading is slated for February 24 before the measure goes to the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives . Eleven US states have recently suspended the death penalty pending review of the manner [...]