A federal judge on Friday issued an order directing Ohio voters to ignore threats of criminal penalties on voter registration forms and instructions , saying that new state registration rules which took effect in May after the February passage of the controversial HB 3 election reform bill by the Republican-dominated Ohio Legislature may violate the [...]

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) on Friday appointed three experts to investigate alleged international law violations by Israel in the ongoing Middle East conflict . The three-person panel was mandated by a resolution , adopted by the HRC earlier in August that also rebuked Israel called for an immediate end to its offensive in [...]

Arguing that the NSA domestic surveillance program is a necessary weapon in the war on terror, the US Department of Justice Friday filed a motion in federal court asking the court to delay enforcement of an order requiring the NSA to immediately cease using warrantless wiretaps to monitor domestic phone conversations. In August US District [...]

Incumbent Mexican president Vicente Fox was blocked from delivering the traditional state-of the nation address (known in Spanish as "El Informe") before the Mexican Congress Friday evening by protesting leftist lawmakers supporting presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his calls for an "alternative" government to oppose Felipe Calderon , whose victory in the disputed [...]

The city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania on Friday agreed to delay for 20 days enforcement of a tough new local law against illegal immigration while it rewrites the ordinance in an effort to bolster it against legal challenges. The law was challenged last month by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU) and the Puerto [...]

Resolution 1706 (2006), expanding the mandate of the United Nations Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) to include its deployment to Darfur in order to support the early and effective implementation of the Darfur Peace Agreement, UN Security Council, August 31, 2006. Read the full text of the resolution and a summary of explanatory statements. Reported [...]

Two days of court-ordered mediation have resulted in a $16.65 million settlement between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee and 10 people who alleged they were sexually abused by a priest whom the diocese transferred to California, the archdiocese announced Friday . Insurance will cover about half of the settlement. The archdiocese allegedly transferred Siegfried [...]

The government of Croatia has asked the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for amicus curiae status under Rule 74 of the ICTY Rules of Procedure and Evidence in the war crimes trials of three former Croatian generals and six former Bosnian Croat officials , state radio in Croatia reported Friday. Croatian Prime [...]

The US Department of Education gave personal data about several hundred student loan applicants to the FBI as part of an anti-terrorism program called Project Strikeback, the New York Times reported Friday. Under the program, which began after the September 11 attacks, the Education Department checked names sent by the FBI against the 14 million [...]

The regional chief executive of Newmont Mining Corporation , an American gold-mining company with a subsidiary in Indonesia, testified Friday in his criminal pollution trial. Richard Ness , who is accused of placing arsenic and mercury into the waters of Indonesia's Buyat Bay, told the court that the "waste rock" Newmont dumped into the Bay [...]