The chief observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission to Ethiopia 2005 (EU EOM) said Thursday that the country's May 15 parliamentary elections did not meet international voting standards. In the first EU report released since the vote, Ana Gomes said that intimidation tactics of witnesses and arrests of opposition members rose to the [...]

Two media rights groups called for US Middle East military commander General John Abizaid to release a Reuters journalist being held at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq unless the military can provide a valid explanation for his detention. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists have accused US [...]

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied the request of former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers' request to serve his 25-year prison sentence in a low-security facility near his Mississippi home, placing him instead in a medium-security prison in Louisiana. Ebbers was convicted earlier this year on nine counts of fraud, conspiracy and filing false statements [...]

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled Thursday by a seven to one margin that Germany's early parliamentary election scheduled for next month can go ahead. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder purposefully lost a vote of confidence in the federal parliament in July, prompting the scheduling of the vote one year earlier than the original date. Two [...]

UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke Wednesday denounced a statement issued by the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak urging the UK to refrain from deporting Islamic radicals for fear that they will face torture by their home countries. In an interview with Great Britain's ITV News, Clarke said, "The human rights of those people [...]

The US has proposed over 750 amendments to the United Nations draft agreement that 175 countries are expected to sign during a UN General Assembly summit on poverty and global security scheduled for next month. US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote a confidential letter Wednesday to certain UN envoys calling on the [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Wednesday praised an extradition agreement between the US and Colombia which forces Colombian drug traffickers to face trials in the US. Gonzales spoke at a press conference in Bogota with Mario Iguaran, Colombia's Prosecutor-General, calling the extradition program the "very best in the world." Since Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez [...]

Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba said Thursday that a final version of the Iraqi constitution has been completed and that the document will be approved later today. A National Assembly spokesman said earlier Thursday that the parliament had cancelled the scheduled vote on the constitution set for today, but Kubba said that parliament did not [...]

Nine northeastern US states are working on a plan to cap and then reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions from power facilities, an agreement which would see the states breaking with President Bush, who earlier this summer rejected the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Each state legislature in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, [...]

The US Department of Justice said Wednesday that tobacco companies should be responsible for more than $140 million in US government costs associated with bringing a racketeering lawsuit against the industry for misleading the public about the health effects of smoking. In a filing in federal court the government called the companies' tactics throughout the [...]