Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko on Friday spoke out against pending constitutional changes that will lead, in his opinion, to an "unbalanced and ineffective government", and suggested a national referendum to decide the matter. The changes to the country's constitution , scheduled to take effect on January 1, will strip Yushchenko's power to nominate a prime [...]

The British Parliament announced Friday that the Intelligence and Security Committee will launch an official investigation into allegations that 28 Pakistani terror suspects held in Greece following the July 7 London bombings were abused by 15 Greek agents and one British MI6 officer. The announcement comes on the heels of the Greek Ministry of Justice [...]

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has made an offer to settle nearly 200 pending clergy sex abuse lawsuits, lawyers representing plaintiffs in the litigation said Friday. The settlement offer would require that all pending lawsuits be divided into three tiers. Tier one and two plaintiffs would be paid from the settlement fund by an [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Thursday upheld the dismissal of a suit alleging religious discrimination against General Motors (GM) . Writing for the court, Judge Ann Claire Williams supported the decision to dismiss the lawsuit because the corporation's Affinity Group diversity program treated all religions equally by prohibiting the promotion [...]

Chile's Santiago Court of Appeals voted 21-3 Friday to strip Augusto Pinochet of political immunity in respect of a fraud charge against the 90-year-old former dictator, who was fingerprinted and photographed by Chilean police on Wednesday in connection with a human rights proceeding for which his immunity had likewise been lifted. The fraud charge stems [...]

Defying a gag order by the UK Foreign Office , former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig S. Murray has posted two documents to his weblog suggesting that despite government denials, the British government knowingly received intelligence information obtained by torture. The first document is a collection of telegrams sent from Murray between 2002 and 2004 [...]

Kentucky lawmakers are bracing for renewed debate over public displays of the Ten Commendments after a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld a display of the Ten Commandments in a Mercer County, KY courthouse in a ruling last week. The display, unlike other public displays of the Ten [...]

The Adoption and Children Act , a new UK law effective Friday, has for the first time granted unmarried and same-sex couples in England and Wales the right to adopt children. The new legislation is designed to encourage adoption and find homes for the 1,000-2,000 children who fail to be adopted each year. Previously, only [...]

AP is reporting that the US Department of Justice has begun an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic surveillance program first disclosed in a New York Times article earlier this month. 10:53 AM ET – Justice Department officials revealed the existence of the probe on condition of anonymity, given [...]

Senior officers in the British Army have been briefed on protecting the reputation of the armed services in the midst of close judicial scrutiny of soldiers' conduct in Iraq, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper Friday. The British military has come in for sharp public criticism in the wake of the court martial [...]