Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is silencing dissent by prosecuting journalists under questionable circumstances, a US media watchdog group said Tuesday. The Inter American Press Association is sending an international mission to Venezuela next week to investigate press freedom, where they will discuss recent notable cases with journalists, local government officials and rights groups. Venezuela Information [...]

Enough evidence existed to support the prosecution of three Chicago police officers accused of torturing black suspects between 1971 and 1992, according to a report released Wednesday by special prosecutors Robert D. Boyle and Edward J. Egan. The report found that in at least three cases enough evidence existed to establish guilt of the officers [...]

A draft report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday has found that the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lost hundreds of thousands of dollars last year through fraud and abusive spending as a result of poor oversight of government issued credit cards [...]

A British judge has ruled that the parts of the upcoming UK state secrets trial relating to an alleged memo detailing a conversation between US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair describing plans to bomb satellite news channel Aljazeera cannot be disclosed to the public. David Keogh, a former British civil servant [...]

Prosecutors in Mauritania have charged five people, including a Defense Ministry advisor with close ties to ousted autocratic ruler Maaouiya Ould Taya , with "plotting to reverse the constitutional order" by overthrowing the military junta. The suspects, charged Tuesday, were arrested June 19 for allegedly conspiring to disrupt the constitutional referendum that overwhelmingly passed in [...]

Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed a bill Tuesday that sets the minimum age for a common-law marriage at 18, or at 16 with judicial approval. The new law is a response to a Colorado Court of Appeals decision in June that the English common law minimum age of 12 applied because Colorado had no stated [...]

An Israeli military tribunal has released one of the eight Palestinian Cabinet ministers detained by Israeli forces last month, though the Israel Defense Forces have not explained why planning minister Samir Abu Eisheh was released. Three other Hamas ministers were held for further questioning for five to 10 days, and nine other Hamas leaders detained [...]

Adel al-Lami, the director general of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, and 10 other employees have been arrested after al-Lami surrendered to an arrest warrant, Judge Radhi al-Radhi , chairman of the Iraqi High Commission on Public Integrity , said Tuesday. The 11 suspects were arrested on charges of corruption after five members of [...]

The Internet video site YouTube was sued in federal district court Tuesday for alleged copyright infringement related to video of the beating of trucker Reginald Denny during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The suit was filed by the Los Angeles News Service, a company founded by helicopter pilot Bob Tur and his wife, who allege [...]

Kyrgyz security forces have arrested six men who reportedly confessed to organizing last year's unrest in Uzbekistan that resulted in the massacre of unarmed Uzbek civilians by government troops in Andijan. Uzbek officials said the men confessed to Kyrgystan's SNB security service, and a Kyrgyz police spokesman said one of the suspects possessed 14 ounces [...]