Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Tuesday visited the Yasukuni war shrine on the anniversary of the day when Emperor Hirohito surrendered World War II in 1945. The shrine honors all Japanese war dead, including war criminals, and Koizumi's visits to the shrine on previous occasions have not only angered neighboring China and South Korea [...]
The ruling military junta in Myanmar will resume negotiations for a new constitution this fall, Myanmar Ambassador to the Philippines Thaung Tun said Tuesday. Tun told journalists that the constitution is 75 percent complete, and that the parties have "agreed on the basic principles of the new constitution," which include a person in a presidential [...]
A US federal court judge has released the Chicago Public Schools from federal budgetary reporting oversight in respect of its desegregation efforts more than 25 years after a 1980 agreement that required the schools to spend almost $100 million annually on desegregation, including after-school programs, summer school and bilingual projects. US District Judge Charles Kocoras [...]
Some 24,000 illegal immigrants with school-age children are waiting to learn whether they will be deported from France after the expiration of a Monday deadline set by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy for residency applications. Sarkozy has spearheaded a drive to return the immigrants to their home countries, and the French government has even offered [...]
Three men were sentenced to death and five men to life in prison in Bangladesh Tuesday for their involvement in a series of bombings on police, court and government buildings last year. All eight men are members of the Islamist militant group Jamaat-ul Mujahideen , which wants to turn Bangladesh into an Islamic state governed [...]
Ching Cheong , chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times , went on trial Tuesday in China on charges of selling state secrets and spying for Taiwan . Though media in Hong Kong reported that the trial began at the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court, court officials denied knowledge of the trial. Chinese espionage [...]
President Bush on Monday signed a bill into law that transfers ownership of a 29-foot cross on Mount Soledad in San Diego to the federal government. The cross, which was erected as a Korean War veterans memorial, has been the center of a religious dispute for 17 years because Philip Paulson, a Vietnam veteran and [...]
An Egyptian appeals court ruled Monday that 11 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood jailed since May after participating in pro-judicial independence protests earlier this year should be released from detention . Detainees ordered released include top Brotherhood members Issam al-Arian and Mohamed Morsi. Over 500 protesters were arrested during demonstrations in May and 80 [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday directed the US Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy and Office of Legal Counsel to conduct a comparative review of American and British anti-terrorism laws . Gonzales' order comes just one day after US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested that US lawmakers consider revising US [...]
Allegations of recruiting violations by the US military increased from 4,400 cases in 2004 to 6,600 cases in 2005 according to a report released by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Monday, with actual criminal violations rising by more than 200 percent, from 30 in 2004 to 70 in 2005. The report noted that [...]