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 [...]

A Peruvian judge on Thursday indicted Ollanta Humala , the opposition leader who narrowly lost the June Peruvian presidential election to present incumbent Alan Garcia , for murder, torture and kidnapping stemming from his position as an army captain in Peru's San Martin province during the 1990s. Earlier this month, prosecutors filed informal charges against [...]

A tough amendment to Russia's copyright protection law designed to crack down on the Internet piracy of text, music and videos took effect Friday as part of Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization . The Russian parliament originally approved the amendment to Russia's existing copyright protection law in July 2004; it granted website [...]

Several voting rights groups filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of Ohio Thursday demanding that Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell preserve the paper ballots from the 2004 presidential election , just two days before federal law allows states to destroy the ballots. The voting rights groups, including the Ohio Voter Rights Alliance [...]

An attorney for US Army Sgt. Ricky Clousing , an Iraq war veteran, said Thursday that his client will face a desertion charge at a special court-martial stemming from his June 2005 defection from Fort Bragg . Clousing, who has said he refuses to participate in a war with "no legal basis to be fought," [...]

New Orleans Parish criminal court Judge Arthur Hunter Thursday deferred a threatened review of prisoner records in anticipation of release which he earlier said he would begin on the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina Tuesday. Instead, Hunter said that New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan must sort through the backlog of an estimated 6,000 pending [...]

California's State Assembly passed the nation's first bill to restrict greenhouse gas emissions Thursday, by a vote of 46-31. The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 grants new authority to the California Air Resources Board to set specific emission targets for various industries and set fees to raise money for new emission reduction initiatives. The [...]

The UN Security Council passed a resolution Thursday authorizing the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops to the Darfur region of Sudan under the authority of the current UN Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS) . The new peacekeeping force will replace the current African Union force whose mandate is set to expire September 30. The resolution [...]