The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced Friday that the Swedish government has accepted its invitation to conduct an audit of the Scheveningen detention unit outside of The Hague where Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack in mid-March. The audit will cover all areas relating to the management and administration of [...]

Members of the US Senate Judiciary Committee sparred Friday at a hearing on a resolution put forward by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) to censure President Bush for his approval of the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program . Republican senators expressed dismay at the censure resolution, asserting that some Democrats simply want to score political [...]

Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) Chief Prosecutor Desmond de Silva told the Associated Press in an interview Friday that Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor is being closely guarded by UN peacekeepers from Mongolia and Ireland as he awaits a war crimes trial. The prison where Taylor is being held has taken extraordinary measures to prevent [...]

Text of a televised address on the CPE (contrat premiere embauche) by French President Jacques Chirac, March 31, 2006 . Excerpt: Le Parlement, les élus de la Nation, ont voté la loi sur l'égalité des chances et le Conseil constitutionnel vient de juger cette loi en tout point conforme aux principes et aux valeurs de [...]

The EU on Friday extended its deadline for Serbia to hand over wanted war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic to April 30 after chief ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte confirmed the country's willingness to cooperate with the tribunal. Mladic has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for genocide and crimes against [...]

French President Jacques Chirac said Friday that he will sign the First Employment Contract (CPE) , a controversial labor law which, in its current form, includes a provision allowing employers to hire workers under 26 for a conditional two-year period at the end of which they can be dismissed without cause. In a televised address [...]

Tony Rudy , former deputy chief of staff and press secretary to US Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) , pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy Friday. Rudy admitted to working with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff , among other people, to corrupt public officials and defraud clients while he was employed by DeLay and later while [...]

In a verdict upholding gender equality, the Supreme Court of Nepal ruled Thursday that men can no longer divorce their wives on grounds of the latter's infertility. A special bench of the court declared a provision in the 43-year old Civil Code relating to husband and wife "ultra vires." The discriminatory provision in the code [...]

Polish prosecutors on Friday charged General Wojciech Jaruzelski with "organizing crimes of a military nature" and "carrying out crimes that consisted of the deprivation of freedom through internment" for his imposition of martial law in Poland on December 13, 1981. The charges, which prosecutors have been preparing since late last year, were brought by the [...]

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for the United Nations to reduce the number of reports it produces each year as part of his ongoing UN reform agenda first announced in March 2005. In a report delivered to the General Assembly on Thursday, Annan indicated that the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human [...]