An opposition activist who was critical of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko during his most recent presidential campaign has been sentenced to three years in jail by a Belarus court. Nikolai Razumov was arrested on March 14 after making comments that Lukashenko is connected to the disappearances of opposition leaders Yuri Zakharenko, Viktor Gonchar and Anatoly [...]

The US Army has charged one non-commissioned US military officer and two US soldiers in the deaths of three Iraqi detainees while they were in custody in the northern Salahuddin province of Iraq, according to a statement released by the Multinational Corps-Iraq (MNC-I) Monday. The three soldiers have been charged with several violations of the [...]

South Dakota Secretary of State Chris Nelson confirmed Monday that a law banning most abortions , which was passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor earlier this year, will appear on the November 2006 ballot as a question for voters . The South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, which opposes the law, [...]

Any attempts to pass a British version of the US Megan's Law must balance the public's need for information against the security of child-sex offenders, a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said during a press briefing on Monday. Speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, Blair's official spokesman said there is "genuine concern" about [...]

New Jersey Attorney General Zulima Farber on Monday filed a court petition on behalf of 16 states seeking to reactivate a lawsuit filed last year against the Environmental Protection Agency . The lawsuit challenged the EPA's "cap-and-trade" policy, scheduled to take effect in 2010, which permits power plants to buy mercury emissions reduction credits from [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin nominated Justice Minister Yury Chaika on Monday to be the country's new prosecutor-general . Leaders of the Federation Council , the upper house of parliament, said they expected Chaika to be confirmed . A vote is scheduled for June 23. The speaker of the lower house, the Duma, also expressed approval [...]

The Kurdistan Islamic Group and Kurdistan Islamic Union , both major Sunni political parties in Iraq, announced plans to campaign against a draft regional constitution for Kurdistan that does not draw its "principal source of legislation" from Islam. The two groups want the regional constitution to be in line with the second article of the [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday announced it would hear a second case challenging the constitutionality of the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 . The court granted certiorari in Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood , a Bush administration appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, which [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union confirmed Monday that a lawyer working for the New York attorney general's office informally warned the ACLU executive committee not to adopt proposed standards limiting ACLU board members from publicly speaking about their internal policies. The ACLU board met over the weekend to discuss the proposal, but took no action. [...]

Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a Pakistani-born Australian immigrant, was convicted Monday of plotting a terrorist attack in Australia, marking one of the first convictions under new Australian anti-terrorism laws passed in the wake of 9/11. A New South Wales Supreme Court jury found Lodhi not guilty of downloading aerial maps for the purpose of terrorism after [...]