The Adoption and Children Act , a new UK law effective Friday, has for the first time granted unmarried and same-sex couples in England and Wales the right to adopt children. The new legislation is designed to encourage adoption and find homes for the 1,000-2,000 children who fail to be adopted each year. Previously, only [...]

AP is reporting that the US Department of Justice has begun an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic surveillance program first disclosed in a New York Times article earlier this month. 10:53 AM ET – Justice Department officials revealed the existence of the probe on condition of anonymity, given [...]

Senior officers in the British Army have been briefed on protecting the reputation of the armed services in the midst of close judicial scrutiny of soldiers' conduct in Iraq, according to a report in the Guardian newspaper Friday. The British military has come in for sharp public criticism in the wake of the court martial [...]

The Canadian-based International Mission for Iraqi Elections established in 2004 to advise and consult on the Iraqi electoral process agreed Thursday to review the results of Iraq's December 15 parliamentary elections in the wake of large-scale protests in Iraq over against alleged fraud in the poll. The IMIE investigation will encompass post-election complaints, political entity [...]

Switzerland's Supreme Court Thursday overturned a lower court ruling and decided to extradite former Russian nuclear minister Yevgeny Adamov to Russia, rather than to the US, where he has been indicted for diverting $9 million in US Department of Energy aid money designed to improve nuclear safety to his personal business. Adamov was indicted by [...]

A federal judge has refused a request made six months ago by former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling to dismiss the ten insider trading charges filed against him. Skilling is alleged to have sold $26 million in stock while in possession of non-public information about the company's financial situation, but argued the indictment failed to specify [...]

In a letter to US President George W. Bush, the chief Iraqi defense counsel for Saddam Hussein has urged Hussein's immediate release in order to restore peace in Iraq, and has condemned the ousted president's current trial as a farce riddled with false witnesses and lies. In a copy of the letter obtained by Reuters, [...]

US military authorities at the Guantanamo detention facility announced Thursday that the number of participants in the ongoing hunger strike at the prison has surged, reaching an acknowledged total of 84, including 48 who have joined the action since last Sunday. The Pentagon defines a hunger striker as someone who has refused food for nine [...]

Prosecutors are once again investigating Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi , this time on charges that he bribed his former lawyer to give false testimony in two criminal cases, according to a report Thursday in Milan's Corriere della Sera newspaper. Berlusconi is said to have paid British lawyer David Mills, who worked for the media [...]

Prosecutors in Turkey have dropped one of the two state slander charges against Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk , eliminating the allegation that he insulted Turkey's armed forces. Pamuk, whose work often examines the clashes between society and the role of Islam, is on trial for "public denigration of the Turkish identity" after he made supposedly-unfavorable [...]