The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Thursday renewed its call for access to detainees still being held in Myanmar after the government's crackdown last month on opponents of the ruling military junta. In his second statement calling for access to detainees in the past two weeks, ICRC Director of Operations Pierre Kraehenbuehl, [...]

Bosnian Prime Minister Nikola Spiric resigned Thursday, reportedly in protest over proposed voting rule reforms for the Bosnian parliament. Miroslav Lajcak , a Slovak diplomat who is the high representative to the Peace Implementation Council , introduced the new voting rules Wednesday ostensibly designed to streamline the country's reform process. The PIC is the international [...]

The government of Ireland said Thursday it will introduce new legislation next year recognizing the rights of both same-sex and unmarried heterosexual couples to enter into civil unions, after debate on a motion to restore the Civil Unions Bill 2006 stalled in the Irish Parliament . The opposition Irish Labour Party re-introduced the bill, previously [...]

US President George W. Bush on Thursday defended the refusal of Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey to say that waterboarding is illegal. During a press conference Thursday, Bush said: I've submitted a highly competent, smart, independent nominee in Judge Mukasey to the Senate. I am disappointed that the process is taking so long to get [...]

The interim government of Bangladesh Thursday announced that its judiciary has formally separated from the executive branch. The interim government completed all formalities necessary to separate the judiciary in August, meeting a deadline set by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in July. Lower court judges and judicial magistrates now will be appointed by the Supreme [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan judge presiding over a case challenging the legality of President Pervez Musharraf's re-election bid said Thursday that the court is unlikely to rule in the case until mid-November. The court has previously said it hoped to issue a decision by the end of this week, but arguments have gone on [...]

A London jury Thursday found that the Metropolitan Police violated laws relating to health and public safety when it shot and killed Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in a London Tube station in 2005, believing him to be a suicide bomber. The prosecution argued that due to several mistakes made by London police during their [...]

A federal judge Wednesday enjoined the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from implementing new rules that would have limited the number of claims that can be included in a patent application and the number of times a continuation application can be filed for a given invention. Judge James Cacheris of the Eastern District of [...]

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has signed a bill into law that amends the Zimbabwean Constitution to essentially allow Mugabe to pick his successor. A government publication indicated that the bill came into effect on Tuesday. The Zimbabwean Parliament unanimously passed the bill in September following only one day of debate . The changes allow parliament [...]

A Bush administration official Wednesday called the Senate's proposed domestic surveillance bill "generally a strong piece of legislation," but repeated several administration demands, including a provision granting blanket immunity to telecommunications companies from privacy lawsuits related to their participation in the NSA warrantless surveillance program , and the elimination of a proposal to extend the [...]