US Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim said Tuesday that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is working with states missing deadlines to update voting databases and equipment under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 before mid-term elections on November 7. The DOJ has already sued 17 jurisdictions, including the states of Alabama, Maine, [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp. , 05-848, where the justices are considering a challenge to modifications to coal-fired power plants made by Duke Energy that allow the plants to run longer each day, increasing the amount of emissions, but not affecting the rate. According to [...]

Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez has signed an order allowing Guatemala to extradite former Guatemalan president Alfonso Portillo so that he can face charges of embezzlement for alleged misuse of defense department funds during his presidency, Mexican officials said Tuesday. The charges allege that officials tied to Portillo pocketed most of the $15 million [...]

A British court Wednesday ordered the release of two brothers charged in connection with an alleged plot to blow up commercial planes flying from Great Britain to the US in August. In a hearing at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court , District Judge Quentin Purdy freed Umair Hussain and Mehran Hussain , saying there [...]

A UN human rights body has called the Communist Party of Nepal – Maoists (CPN-M) to stop its parallel law enforcement activities, which has resulted into "serious" human rights abuses in Nepal recently. "OHCHR-Nepal calls again on the CPN-M leadership to stop all parallel 'law enforcement' activities, and especially incidents of torture and ill-treatment," Sandra [...]

The National People's Congress of China Tuesday approved an amendment to the country's banking laws which was written to combat corruption as global competition with the Chinese banking sector continues to increase. The amendment will make it easier for banking supervisory organizations to uncover illegalities in the banking sector by opening up investigations to include [...]

A senior judge in Iraq has been kidnapped at gunpoint, a Salahudin provincial police colonel said Wednesday. Judge Sa'adoun Hassan al-Azzawi was kidnapped Tuesday night by gunmen while traveling in his car. Azzawi is the deputy head of the Tikrit court of appeal, and his abduction marks the third recent attack on judges by militants. [...]

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has again said that he plans to revise the country's constitution to allow the country to better defend itself and to assist in international security efforts. In an interview published Tuesday by the Financial Times, Abe said that provisions in the current constitution, which was written in 1947 after World [...]

Turkey's bid for European Union membership could be further damaged by an unreleased report on the country's human rights record, a draft version of which was obtained by the Independent. The report condemns Turkey's refusal to compromise on free speech issues or to allow ships from Cyprus to dock in Turkish ports. An emergency negotiation [...]

Serbian war crimes suspect and former nationalist politician Vojislav Seselj , was removed from a court hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Wednesday after he disrupted proceedings on several occasions. An ICTY appeals panel last month ruled that Seselj could represent himself during his trial, but also appointed two lawyers [...]