Myanmar's military-led government announced Sunday that it will not seek the rotating chairmanship of the regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) security organization as it was entitled to do. The announcement was made during ASEAN's Ministerial Meeting in Laos, and follows repeated expressions of international dissatisfaction, especially by Western governments, over its democracy and [...]

A spokesman for former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's bloc of secular Shiites threatened Sunday that members of the bloc would join Sunnis members in boycotting the proceedings of Iraq's constitutional drafting committee . Adnan al-Janabi expressed disapproval of the committee's lukewarm response to the walkout of several Sunni members on Wednesday, following the July 19 [...]

London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair expressed regret Sunday over the killing of a man police mistakenly thought connected to July 21 London bombings . Blair stated that the shooting of Brazilian citizen Jean Charles de Menezes was a “tragedy”, but defended the use of deadly force in the Stockwell subway station, and insisted [...]

London's Metropolitan Police Service announced in a statement Saturday that a man originally said to be a suicide bomber shot dead by plainclothes police at point blank range at the Stockwell Tube station in London Friday was not connected with any of the London bombings and that the service regretted the "tragedy." The man killed [...]

Pakistani officials said Saturday that they will use their enhanced Anti-Terrorism Act to try over 100 members of militant Islamic factions detained in the Punjab province this weekend. The crackdown comes shortly after the revelation that the bombers implicated in the July 7 attacks in London were of Pakistani descent and had travelled to Pakistan [...]

UN officials have released a revised version of plans to reform the 60-year old organization and its mandate, articulating for the first time a definition of terrorism ("the targeting and deliberate killing of civilians and noncombatants") to ground a new anti-terror convention and authorizing the UN Security Council to step in to stop genocide, war [...]

The Iranian judiciary released a report Saturday detailing what it called widespread instances of human rights violations, from solitary confinement to physically coerced confessions. A law passed last year banning torture is frequently ignored, according to the report, confirming criticisms of Iranian prisons by watchdog groups . Reuters has more.

California's Third District Court of Appeal ruled late Friday that Proposition 80 , a ballot initiative that would expand the power of the California Public Utilities Commission , violated the state constitution and struck it from the November ballot. Because Article 12 {text] of the California Constitution gives plenary power to the Legislature to control [...]

A senior Royal Nepalese Army official said Saturday that six Nepalese soldiers who were part of a UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been convicted of sexual abuse. The United Nations last year implemented new measures to reduce such situations from occurring, such as making it easier for women to come [...]

US Department of Defense lawyers have refused to comply with a federal judge's order to release pictures and videotapes documenting the abuse of Abu Ghraib prisoners, alleging release "could result in harm to individuals." Judge Alvin Hellerstein had ordered the information be released as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the [...]