Government lawyers have defended US treatment of a suicidal Guantanamo Bay detainee in court papers filed this week, claiming that he is receiving appropriate mental health care and otherwise being treated humanely. Jumah Dossari has made nine suicide attempts since March 2003, including an attempt in front of his lawyer and another earlier this week [...]

Federal prosecutors have charged an official of St. Tammany Parish with accepting kickbacks to arrange a debris-removal contract as part of the Hurricane Katrina cleanup. St. Tammany Parish Council member Joseph Impastato is accused of taking $85,000 from a local businessman who had a site available for dumping. The parish awards contracts every year in [...]

Leading Friday's international brief, UN officials are now admitting that membership of the Security Council is unlikely to change anytime soon, despite months of negotiation and calls for changes to the body's composition. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan supports expansion , and the US supports it in principle, but it opposed the plans put forth [...]

Former French UN ambassador Jean-Bernard Merimee has admitted to a French judge that he accepted $156,000 in connection with the now-defunct UN Oil-for-Food program . Merimee received the money by way of oil allocations from Saddam Hussein's government that could be sold for profit; he is thought to be the first high-level official to admit [...]

Kizza Besigye , the president of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change party, appeared in a military court in Uganda on Friday along with 18 others on charges of treason . Besigye is the top challenger to President Yoweri Museveni in the 2006 election. The US Embassy in Uganda called for the trial to be [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour Friday called for an international investigation into present conditions in Iraqi jails after 173 malnourished, beaten and possibly tortured detainees were found in a secret Iraqi Interior Ministry prison facility earlier this week. The Iraqi government has already announced plans to investigate the prisoner abuse itself, and [...]

A Bosnian Serb court Thursday handed down its first war crimes ruling since the end of the Bosnian war in 1995 by sentencing three former Serb police officers to up to 20 years in prison for the deaths of six Muslim citizens. The three officers were originally accused of murder in 1994, but were released [...]

Federal immigration officials Thursday raided a Wal-Mart distribution center construction site in Pennsylvania and arrested over 120 workers for immigration violations. Agents from the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worked with the US Department of Labor , the US Social Security Administration , Pennsylvania State Police, and the local sheriff's office to [...]

United Nations human rights representatives Friday rejected an offer to visit the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay after US officials formally refused their demand for unconditional access to the detainees earlier this week. The envoys from the UN Commission on Human Rights had wanted free access to interview the 500 prisoners currently being held. [...]

Legislation to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act , many provisions of which are due to expire at the end of the year if not renewed, stalled Thursday as members of the bill's negotiating committee worked to appease some senators who are concerned about the removal of civil liberties protections. Senators on the committee have not [...]