The US Senate Wednesday morning voted 49-48 against holding an up-or-down vote on the Marriage Protection Amendment , rejecting a motion to invoke cloture . Though the Senate voted to continue debate on the resolution, the issue is not expected to remain on the agenda for debate on the Senate floor, so the vote effectively [...]

Over 250 Afghans were arrested, 141 are still in custody, and 52 have confessed to crimes committed during anti-American riots in Kabul last week in response to an incident where a US military vehicle collided with 12 civilian vehicles in northern Kabul, the Afghani national security director said Wednesday. At least seven people were killed [...]

Iraqi officials on Wednesday released nearly 600 detainees who had been in Iraqi and US custody – the first of 2,500 detainees slated to be released under the order of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki . In the interest of national reconciliation, Maliki said Tuesday that detainees without clear evidence against them and without Iraqi [...]

A French trial court has ordered the French government and the state-controlled railway SNCF to pay 60,000 euros, or about $80,000 US, in compensation to a Jewish family for complicity in crimes against humanity. The case was brought by European Parliament member Alain Lipietz and his sister on behalf of their father and relatives who [...]

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Cabinet have announced that the federal government will set aside legislation allowing same-sex civil unions in the Australian Capital Territory , the federal district that includes Canberra. Speaking Tuesday at a press conference , the prime minister said: Well I can indicate that the legislation by its own [...]

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the US Senate Judiciary Committee, has said that he has abandoned his plan to subpoena executives of three top phone companies after Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that national security concerns would prevent executives from speaking about allegedly providing phone records to the NSA. Verizon and BellSouth have [...]

UK Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith will call for prosecutors to study whether the British court-martial system is adequate for prosecuting soldiers accused of misconduct in Iraq , the Times of London reported Wednesday. The development follows Tuesday's acquittal of three infantrymen accused of manslaughter in the death of a 15-year-old Iraqi boy who prosecutors [...]

The US Department of Defense has issued comprehensive guidelines for the treatment of detainees that direct doctors to force-feed detainees who endanger their own lives as a result of a hunger strike. The guidelines , aimed primarily at the recent wave of hunger strikes by detainees at Guantanamo Bay , also gives doctors a limited [...]

A Vatican panel Tuesday condemned same-sex marriage as a major threat to the family, along with abortion , contraception and in vitro fertilization. The Pontifical Council for the Family , founded by Pope John Paul II in 1981, issued a 57-page document titled "Family and Human Procreation," saying that "he unitive act of man and [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales called the May FBI raid of the congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) an "unusual" but necessary step on Tuesday, comparing the office search to past searches of the homes and vehicles of other members of Congress. The US Department of Justice has consistently defended the search of Jefferson's [...]