Leading Tuesday's states brief, Alabama Governor Bob Riley signed legislation today that creates a mandatory sentence of at least 20 years to life for people convicted of certain sex crimes against children 12 and younger, and allows those offenders to be tracked by Global Positioning System technology for at least 10 years after serving their [...]

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga asked Sri Lanka's Supreme Court on Tuesday to decide when the next presidential election should be, in an effort to counter increasingly strong opposition calls for a vote this year. The top political parties in Sri Lanka cannot meet a compromise on the timing of the next poll, with main [...]

Hassan Moghaddas, an Iranian judge who tried a highly-publicized case involving dissident journalist Akbar Ganji , was killed in Tehran on Tuesday by a gunman on a motorcycle. Moghaddas was shot and killed in his car after leaving his central Tehran office, according to Iranian judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad. It was not immediately clear if [...]

After at least 36 people were killed in riots Monday, violence continued in Khartoum, Sudan on Tuesday in response to the death of former rebel leader John Garang [Wikipedia profile, who helped broker a peace deal and became vice president. Garang was the highest ranking official in the Sudanese government to ever come from the [...]

The Philippines government on Tuesday denied a witness's accusation that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo bribed election officials and threatened a lawsuit. Arroyo says people are being paid to testify against her as part of impeachment proceedings . Michael Angelo Zuce, a former aide, says Arroyo paid officials during a meeting in January 2004. Zuce's former [...]

Leonard Clark, of the Arizona Army National Guard , has been demoted from Specialist to Private First Class and fined $1,640 for disclosing classified information on his Iraq weblog . Soldiers are allowed to maintain such sites but cannot post information related to their location, troop movements, or deaths of soldiers whose families have not [...]

Indonesia's Supreme Court has replaced two judges in the trial of Newmont Mining Corporation on charges that it polluted Buyat Bay, near its mine . The high court ruled that the two were not qualified to hear environmental cases. Newmont is confident it will win the criminal case, saying no crime was committed though evidence [...]

A Maryland employee of the National Institutes of Health has been charged under the Terrorism Prevention Act with spreading false information and making a hoax for threatening a tax assessment board with anthrax. Michelle Ledgister, 43, lost a claim for relief with the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office for land she owns in Parkland, Florida. [...]

US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said Tuesday in Baghdad that protecting women's rights was "a fundamental requirement for Iraq's progress". Leaked drafts of the Iraqi constitution have reportedly contained provisions that would apply strict Islamic law to such personal matters as marriage, divorce, and inheritance, significantly limiting women's rights. US Secretary of Defense Donald [...]

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the US Department of Homeland Security has announced over 1,000 gang-related arrests so far this year, including 582 in just the past two weeks . DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff gave details of Operation Community Shield at a press conference Monday. The program was designed to use immigration laws [...]