The Iowa House voted 84-16 Wednesday to pass a bill that would require Iowa employers to verify within 10 business days of hiring a new employee that they are a legal US resident. Employers would have to sign a statement under penalty of perjury that they checked the employee's driver's licenses or state-issued identification card [...]

The movement in Malaysia to reform the judiciary took another step forward Thursday as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a Bar Council assembly that the government will implement a Judicial Appointments Commission that will identify and nominate candidates for the bench, hopefully bringing transparency to the process. A similar proposal was made [...]

Afghan President Hamid Karzai should reinstate a moratorium on the death penalty and should not sign execution orders for 100 prisoners, approved by the Supreme Court this week, advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday. According to the HRW press release : Supreme Court officials told the media those sentenced to death had been [...]

Serbia is not doing enough to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , ICTY Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said Thursday. Brammertz said he was especially concerned with Serbia's inability to find and capture four fugitives wanted in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre , including alleged Srebrenica masterminds Ratko Mladic [...]

South Korean prosecutors on Thursday charged Samsung Chairman and CEO Kun-Hee Lee with breach of trust and tax evasion, but decided not to charge him based on accusations that Samsung maintained a $200 million slush fund to bribe prosecutors, judges and civil servants. Nine other Samsung executives were indicted on similar charges, but none have [...]

The Nagoya District Court in Japan ruled Thursday that Japan's air force mission to Iraq breaches the Japanese constitution , but did not order the government to redeploy the 210 air force personnel in Kuwait aiding the US-led Multi-National Force-Iraq. In a lawsuit brought by more than 1,100 people demanding that the dispatch of air [...]

US military interrogators allegedly abused Afghan detainees in 2003 at the Gardez Detention Facility in southeastern Afghanistan, according to Pentagon documents released Wednesday under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) . The documents indicate that eight Afghan detainees complained of abuse by interrogators, and that a 2006 [...]

The US government will begin collecting DNA samples from every person arrested under federal laws, a Department of Justice spokesman said Wednesday. Federal agencies are authorized to collect DNA samples under a 2006 amendment to the Violence Against Women Act, but previously had only collected DNA from people actually convicted of federal crimes. About 1.2 [...]

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia are chafing under increasingly strict regulations implemented under legislation signed into law in April 2006 by Russian President Vladimir Putin , rights groups told AP Wednesday in the wake of a Tuesday compliance deadline. The groups say they expect the Russian government to continue its clamp-down on foreign-funded and domestic [...]

Lawyers for former Italian Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) chief Nicolo Pollari said Wednesday that they have included Italian Prime Minister-elect Silvio Berlusconi as a requested witness to testify in support of Pollari's assertion that he was not involved in a reported 2003 CIA kidnapping case. Pollari was charged in 2006 in connection with the [...]