Leaders of the Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to amend the military clause in the country's pacifist constitution in an effort to create armed forces that are assertive on an international level. Speaking to a crowd assembled to honor the party's 50th anniversary, Japanese Prime Minister and LDP leader [...]

Iraq Interior Minister Bayan Jabr has again denied that he controls death squads targeting Iraq's Sunni minority and ordered the torture of detainees in a secret prison . In a New York Times interview reported Tuesday, he dismissed the story of the secret prison, saying, "It's nonsense. Only a few detainees were punched and hit, [...]

Prison officials at Russia's Krasnokamensk penitentiary, which is holding jailed oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky , is deliberately hampering the work of his defense lawyers, according to a statement Tuesday on Khodorkovsky's defense website. According to Khodorkovsky's lawyers, prison officials have kept three lawyers from meeting with their client and have reduced their visitation hours [...]

An advisor to the European Union's highest court, the European Court of Justice , advised the body Tuesday that sharing airline passenger data with the US should be declared illegal . Advocate General Philippe Leger said the European Commission used the wrong legal basis when enacting the data-sharing law in May 2004 , relying on [...]

Conrad Black , the media tycoon and former chairman of Hollinger International recently indicted on criminal fraud charges failed to appear for his arraignment in a Chicago courtroom Tuesday. The arraignment was delayed until November 30 after Black's lawyers requested additional time from prosecutors Monday evening. Last week, US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said that he [...]

Austrian prosecutors filed charges Tuesday against British historian David Irving , who was arrested last week for violating an Austrian law making it illegal to deny the Holocaust. Prosecutor Otto Schneider said, "A charge was filed in relation to two speeches in 1989 in which he denied the existence of gas chambers." Irving has previously [...]

Chile's high court voted 5-0 Monday to uphold a lower court decision detaining former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori as he fights extradition to Peru. He will remain in custody until Peru requests his extradition. A first attempt by a Peruvian prosecutor to request extradition was rejected by Peru's Supreme Court because the request did not [...]

AP is reporting that "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla has been indicted on criminal charges. Padilla has been in US custody for over three years on allegations that he was involved in an al Qaeda plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the US and his indefinite detention without charge has been the subject [...]

Former Ecuador President Lucio Gutierrez filed a criminal complaint with the country's attorney general Monday seeking sedition and conspiracy charges against his successor, former Vice President Alfredo Palacio , for allegedly overthrowing the government. Gutierrez was arrested in October when he returned to Ecuador after renouncing political asylum in Colombia. Gutierrez became the third Ecuadorian [...]

A federal lawsuit was filed against McLennan County, Texas Monday by three war protestors claiming that new county ordinances prohibiting roadside parking and camping interferes with their ability to gather outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. Plaintiffs Richard Underhill, Benjamin Hart Viges, and Sherry Glover, who are represented by the Texas Civil Rights Project , are [...]