The Mexican Senate Thursday approved a bill authorizing a variety of judicial reforms providing for public and oral trials, guaranteeing the presumption of innocence and allowing for the use of recorded telephone conversations as evidence with consent. While Mexico's lower house of Congress overwhelmingly approved the bill in February by a 462-6 vote, the Senate [...]

The Parliament of Kenya met Thursday to discuss a power sharing deal between Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and opposition candidate Raila Odinga that could put an end the violence that began in the wake of December's disputed presidential election . On February 14, Kibaki and Odinga agreed to write a new constitution that will create [...]

Spanish National Court Judge Baltasar Garzon Thursday dropped an extradition request against two UK residents formerly held by the US at the Guantanamo Bay prison after finding that they are not competent to stand trial. Jamil el Banna and Omar Deghayes faced an extradition hearing on April 15 after Garzon requested that the two face [...]

A military judge has ruled that US Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) cannot be forced to submit to a deposition in the court-martial of a Marine charged in connection with the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha , lawyers for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani said Wednesday. In 2006, Murtha said that the killings had [...]

Egyptian police arrested 26 additional members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood on Thursday, adding to the 54 members arrested on Tuesday and the 86 arrested Wednesday. The Muslim Brotherhood said Wednesday that its candidates will still stay on the ballots for upcoming provincial council elections, and will complete nomination procedures even while in detention. AP [...]

The UK House of Lords voted Wednesday in favor of abolishing the criminal offenses of blasphemy and blasphemous libel from the UK common law. By a vote of 148-87 , the House of Lords adopted Amendment 144B to the government-sponsored Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill . The full Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill has not [...]

A UK plan that would have required all citizens to obtain ID cards when applying for passports by 2010 has been dropped , the Home Office said Thursday. Under current plans, passports and driver's licenses will be considered acceptable alternative forms of identification for most UK citizens, although people in "positions of trust," such as [...]

Humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip have reached their lowest point since the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967, according to a report released Thursday by a coalition of eight UK-based human rights groups. The coalition, led by Amnesty International UK , said that 80 percent of Gaza's residents depend on food aid, an [...]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Wednesday denounced a Colombian attack on a Ecuadorian camp belonging to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group as a "war crime." Chavez joined Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa in condemning Colombia for the attack, and both urged the Organization of American States (OAS) to conclude that the [...]

A federal judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday scheduled a June trial to resolve the decade-old Indian Trust case . In January, US District Judge James Robertson ruled that the US Department of the Interior (DOI) "unreasonably delayed" the accounting of billions of dollars of American Indian money [...]