Unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the United States before an as-yet-undetermined cutoff date would be allowed to apply for permanent residency provided they pay fines and back taxes and learn English under the latest alternative immigration reform proposal advanced by a group of conservative senators Wednesday. Under the plan, those who had been in the [...]
French union leaders said Wednesday that there is only one "plausible response likely to end the conflict" over the controversial First Employment Contract (contrat premiere embauche, CPE) and gave French President Jacques Chirac until April 15 to withdraw the law, which allows workers under 26 years old to be fired without cause during the first [...]
Nineteen-year-old Canadian Omar Khadr refused to take part in military commission proceedings during a pretrial hearing at Guantanamo Bay Wednesday, claiming that he was mistreated and sent to solitary confinement for no reason. Khadr currently faces charges of murder and conspiracy to commit war crimes stemming from a 2002 incident in Afghanistan where he allegedly [...]
The African Union (AU) says that it will "take all necessary measures to establish the facts" concerning accusations of rape and child abuse brought against members of its peace-monitoring forces in Sudan's Darfur region and will form an independent panel to probe the matter. AU forces, numbering over 7,000, have entered Darfur to observe an [...]
The Council of Europe on Wednesday repeated its calls that Russia officially abolish the death penalty . There have been no executions in Russia for over ten years as the result of a moratorium imposed by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin as part of Russia's entry agreement with the COE. COE monitors, however, on Wednesday [...]
Massachusetts lawmakers have approved a sweeping health care plan that would require all residents to have health coverage or face penalties. Massachusetts is the first state to approve a health insurance reform plan of this nature; Maine's health care plan was considerably expanded under a 2003 law , but the Maine scheme is based on [...]
Nepal's royal government on Wednesday arrested 13 lawyers for holding peaceful rallies demanding peace and restoration of democracy in the Himalayan Kingdom on the eve of a general strike called by the opposition. The group was released later in the evening, a few hours after the Supreme Court of Nepal ordered the government to present [...]
UK Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer of Thoroton who under the UK's traditional governmental structure served three roles as Speaker of the House of Lords, the head of the UK's judiciary, and a minister in the British government, has resigned his judicial post as part of the constitutional reform process instigated by Prime Minister Tony Blair. [...]
Dutch investigators on Wednesday released their final report on their independent investigation into the death of Slobodan Milosevic , saying that the former Yugoslavian leader died of a heart attack on the morning that guards found him dead in his cell at The Hague . The report confirms earlier investigations concluding that Milosevic died of [...]
The international tribunal that is set to hear the case against former Liberian President Charles Taylor hit a wall on Tuesday as court administrators struggled to find a country willing to grant Taylor asylum if he is acquitted of 11 counts of war crimes allegedly committed during Sierra Leone's 11-year civil war. Officials from the [...]