Iranian diplomat Jalal Sharafi has claimed that CIA operatives tortured him after he was kidnapped and detained in Iraq two months ago. According to Iranian state television Saturday, Sharafi, who was released last week, said CIA officials asked him about Iran's relationship with Iraq and various Iraqi groups and then tortured him when he said [...]
A US judge ruled Friday that an anti-Castro militant allegedly behind the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner should be released on bail, which was set at $350,000. Luis Posada Carriles , 78, a former CIA operative trained by the US for the failed anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, snuck into the Miami [...]
Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Google Friday settled a landmark copyright infringement lawsuit which the French news agency filed two years ago against the Internet giant for automatically pulling and displaying photos, headlines and leads of news stories from the websites of AFP subscribers. The agreement will allow Google to post AFP content on its popular [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an emergency stay of an federal injunction Friday, hours after US District Judge Claude M. Hilton of the Eastern District of Virgina issued the partial order prohibiting leading Internet phone service Vonage from subscribing new customers. On March 8, a federal jury returned a verdict [...]
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang blasted a new human rights report released by the US Department of State as being inconsistent with "basic facts" Saturday, characterizing it as unsubstantiated and slanderous to the human rights conditions in China . The annual report on US efforts to support human rights and democracy abroad was delivered [...]
Monica M. Goodling , one of the key aides who took part in planning the firings of eight US Attorneys who was formerly on voluntary leave from her post as special counsel to the US Attorney General, submitted her resignation without cause Friday. Goodling's resignation, effective Saturday, is the third by a Department of Justice [...]
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Friday that it lacks authority to interfere with an Iraqi court conviction and pending death sentence for US citizen Mohammad Munaf , and could not grant a writ of habeas corpus. The court recognized that Munaf, convicted of kidnapping [...]
UN Legal Counsel Nicolas Michel will meet with Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri about the latter's efforts at stalling the establishment of an international tribunal to probe the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri , UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters Thursday. Earlier this week the anti-Syrian majority in the Lebanese parliament [...]
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Friday ordered Russia to compensate a Chechen woman for the disappearance and alleged killing of her husband in 2000. Applicant Asmart Magomedovna Baysayeva's husband disappeared on his way to work, a trip that took him through a checkpoint manned by the Russian military . Despite Russian claims that [...]
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) has signed into law a groundbreaking bill designed to promote drug overdose reporting by granting limited immunity from drug possession charges for those drug users, family members and acquaintances who make the 911 call. The measure is the first such legislation to be adopted by any US state. Richardson, [...]