Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said Wednesday that Republicans were prepared to reverse course on controversial changes to House ethics rules that had raised Democratic ire and had led to deadlock in the House Ethics Committee , preventing it from getting down to business this term. The most problematic change involved altering committee procedures [...]

The Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress ruled Wednesday that under the Hong Kong Basic Law the new leader of Hong Kong to be selected on July 10 will serve out the remaining two years of his predecessor's term and not a brand new 5-year term. The ruling, which follows a draft recommendation made [...]

The Minuteman Project , a civilian border patrol group that has already claimed credit for alerting federal authorities to over 300 illegal border crossings from Mexico, announced Tuesday that it wants to expand its operations northwards to the much longer Canadian border. A spokesman said that the group hopes to establish citizen patrols for Idaho, [...]

A Russian court Wednesday postponed until May 16 a scheduled verdict in the controversial tax fraud prosecution of oil magnate and former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky . The postponement was announced by a simple notice on a Moscow courthouse door which cited no reasons for the delay. Observers speculate that the postponement may be an [...]

The Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog institution, condemned US detention practices at Guantanamo Bay Tuesday in a sharply-worded resolution passed by the parliamentary assembly of the 41-nation body accusing the US of having "betrayed its own highest principles in the zeal with which it has attempted to pursue the 'war on terror'." [...]

Small v. US, Supreme Court of the United States, April 26, 2005 . Excerpt from the opinion by Justice Breyer: …foreign convictions differ from domestic convictions in important ways. Past foreign convictions for crimes punishable by more than one year's imprisonment may include a conviction for conduct that domestic laws would permit, for example, for [...]

Ellen Podgor : "In a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court issued an extremely narrow decision favorable to the government in the case of Pasquantino v. United States. Justice Thomas, delivering the opinion of the Court, held that there was no violation of the common law revenue rule when the government prosecutes a wire [...]

A prominent Islamic scholar was convicted Tuesday by a Virginia jury on 10 counts of encouraging his followers to fight a holy war against the US and join the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks. Ali al-Timimi , 41, a lecturer at the Center for Islamic Information and Education in Falls [...]

A senior US State Department envoy said Tuesday after meetings with German officials that the German federal experience could provide a useful model for a permanent Iraqi constitution. Citing the German structure of multiple laender with considerable autonomy united in a federal union, Richard Jones , former US ambassador to Lebanon and now US Secretary [...]

Italian prosecutors in Milan Tuesday asked a judge to order Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and 12 others to stand trial on corruption charges relating to alleged fraud, tax evasion and money laundering in connection with a TV rights deal involving Mediaset . Mediaset, controlled by a holding company controlled by Berlusconi's family, has denied [...]