The French Council of State has denied a Moroccan-born Muslim woman's citizenship application because she failed to assimilate to French culture and she practices a type of Islam found incompatible with French values. The ruling was made public for the first time on Friday by the French newspaper Le Monde, which reported that the Council [...]

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday that officials will have to adjust the final declaration  of a Paris Mediterranean summit because of a disagreement between Israelis and Palestinians on how Israel  is described in the agreement. The summit began Sunday and was designed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy as an effort to unify Mediterranean countries around [...]

Turkish prosecutors indicted 86 alleged members of the secular Ergenekon group Monday for allegedly attempting to destabilize and overthrow the country's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) . The group is believed responsible for bombing the headquarters of the newspaper Cumhuriyet , assassinating Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink , and planning other attacks to provoke a [...]

Sudan has asked the Arab League to convene emergency crisis talks concerning a possible International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir . The Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa has agreed to hold the requested meeting, although no time or date has been set. ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is expected to [...]

China executed two members of the Chinese Uighur Muslim ethnic minority last week, according to a report from US-funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) . According to the report , the two Uighurs, Mukhtar Setiwalki and Abduweli Imin, were executed after a public announcement of their death sentences on July 9 in China's Xinjiang region. Two [...]

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday told members of the Russian lower house of parliament, the State Duma , that he will sign newly-prepared anti-corruption legislation in the near future. Medvedev, speaking at the start of a meeting with party leaders from the Duma, stated that his administration has "very important work to do to [...]

Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution Friday which would have imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe . The three other permanent members of the Security Council, the US, Britain and France, voted in favor of the sanctions, arguing that such measures were needed to respond to the repression and violence linked to Zimbabwe’s [...]

The Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed a petition Friday asking the ICC to lift an indefinite stay on the trial of Congolese ex-militia leader Thomas Lubanga . The ICC had imposed the stay last month due to prosecutorial misconduct, concluding that Lubanga would be unable to receive a [...]

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled Friday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the authority to institute a "cap-and-trade" policy for controlling levels of soot and smog emissions. The Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) was intended to permanently cap emissions of sulfur dioxide and [...]

International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will seek a warrant to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir , according to statements made Friday by US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack. Moreno-Ocampo is expected to present evidence of human rights crimes allegedly committed in the Sudanese region of Darfur . Sudanese Foreign Affairs Minister Al-Samani [...]