US lawmakers Wednesday expressed some discomfort with a proposal by the Bush administration to increase the response role of the US Department of Defense in disasters during a hearing of a House Armed Services Committee subcommittee. House members questioned whether such a plan would leave the military stretched too thin, and also noted that the [...]

Judith Miller , the New York Times reporter at the center of the CIA leak case , has left the newspaper after 28 years there, the Times announced Wednesday . Miller negotiated with the paper for several weeks about her departure after she was jailed for 85 days this summer for failing to reveal her [...]

Doctors directed to examine former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet have declared him fit to stand trial for the first time on charges that he coordinated the killings of political opponents during the 1970s. According to a report prepared by the examining doctors and revealed by sources Wednesday, Pinochet appeared lucid and showed no signs of [...]

The Pentagon has said it will not seek the death penalty against Omar Ahmed Khadr , an 18-year-old Canadian citizen detained at Guantanamo Bay who admitted throwing a grenade that killed a US medic while fighting with the Taliban in 2002. The decision, announced Tuesday, has pleased the Canadian government, which had sought assurances that [...]

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments in US v. Georgia and Goodman v. Georgia , a consolidated case in which it will decide whether states can be sued by disabled inmates under the Americans with Disabilities Act for failing to accomodate them. In the case, the Court heard the appeal of Tony Goodman, [...]

Egyptian judges have raised questions about the accuracy of the final results in September's presidential election, although they said that any irregularities did not affect the outcome of the race. An informal association of judges in Egypt released a report Tuesday in which they acknowledged being unable to completely supervise the election as legally required. [...]

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Wednesday said treason charges would be leveled against the leaders of violent protests that left 42 dead following a confrontation with police last week. Meles called the protests an "Orange Revolution gone wrong," in reference to protests in Ukraine last year. The opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy party [...]

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has called for global cooperation in the arrest of five members of Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) , during a report Tuesday to the UN General Assembly. The ICC, which issued warrants for LRA leader Joseph Kony and his deputies for the killing of thousands of civilians and the [...]

The US Senate on has rejected a proposal to create an independent commission patterned after the Sept. 11 Commission to investigate US treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. With a 55-43 party-line vote, senators on Tuesday rejected the proposed amendment to S. 1042 , the defense appropriations bill, put forth by Sen. [...]

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby , the indicted former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, has established a fund to help pay for his defense against criminal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame , lawyers and people contacted about [...]