Three Saudi reformers on trial for sedition and using Western tactics in calling for the institution of a limited constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia were sentenced to prison terms of six to nine years Sunday. Human rights observers and family members of the accused were barred from the courtroom when the judgment was rendered; the [...]

The Iranian parliament Sunday passed a measure encouraging Iran's government to resume the "peaceful use" of nuclear technology consistent with international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In referring to "provision of the fuel cycle for generating 20,000 megawatts of electricity" the measure appears to envisage the resumption of uranium enrichment, a major bone [...]

A federal appeals court Friday upheld a lower court ruling that the inscription "In God We Trust" above the doorway of a county government building in North Carolina is not an unconstitutional infringement of the separation of church and state. A panel of the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the privately-funded inscription [...]

A US military investigator has cleared a US Marine of murder charges in connection with the deaths of two Iraqi prisoners. 2nd Lt. Ilario Pantano stood accused of killing the two prisoners execution-style on April 15, 2004; if convicted he could have faced the death penalty. Lt. Col. Mark Winn, presiding at Pantano's Article 32 [...]

As anti-US violence continued for a fourth day in Afghanistan on Saturday, Afghan Chief Justice Fazl Hadi Shinwari called for an American apology and punishment for those responsible if recent allegations about desecration of the Koran by US personnel at Guantanamo Bay turned out to be true. His comments were echoed by Afghan President Hamid [...]

A spokesman for new Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Dawa Party said Saturday that arrest warrants have been issued for two former cabinet ministers in former Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government. Ex-Transport Minister Louei Hatim Sultan al-Aris and ex-Labor Minister Leila Abdul-Latif are both wanted on corruption charges; Abdul-Latif has also been cited for [...]

Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party has won the most seats in Saturday's election for a special assembly charged with considering proposed amendments to the island country's constitution, a delicate task in light of recent reunification and independence controversies with mainland China. One of the proposed changes would see future constitutional amendments approved by popular referendum [...]

The head of Uzbekistan's Independent Human Rights Organization was quoted Saturday as saying that some 200 people were killed in the eastern city of Andijan Friday when government forces backed by tanks opened fire on demostrators in the central square of the city protesting government repression in the wake of a trial of 23 Muslim [...]

Officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced Saturday that the country's legislature has adopted a new constitution to replace the transitional document agreed to in South Africa in 2002 to end the DRC's brutal five-year civil war, said to have killed some 3 million people. The new national charter, which now must be [...]

A gathering of some 3000 Egyptian judges in Cairo Friday followed up threats first made in April and agreed by consensus to boycott the upcoming Egyptian national election unless the government gives them full and independent oversight responsibility. Judges are required by Egyptian law to supervise voting, but they have complained about executive rigging of [...]