GOP Senator George Voinovich surprised observers Thursday when he told colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he will not support the nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations , although he said he would allow the nomination to go forward to the full Senate. Voinovich, who also balked at [...]

Hearings began Thursday in a civil suit filed against the Dutch government by two families of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre . The families claim that the Dutch government should be held responsible because of Dutch peacekeepers' inability to stop Serb forces' slaughter of 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys from the UN-protected eastern [...]

Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag , approved the European Constitution Thursday by a 569-23 vote. The Constitution next heads to the Bundesrat , Germany's upper house, where it is also expected to pass. A poll conducted earlier this week showed that 59 percent of Germans support the EU pact . German approval is [...]

Riots in eastern Afghanistan triggered by recent Newsweek-published reports of American desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo continued and spread Thursday, resulting in three more deaths . Rioting has now hit 10 Afghan provinces, including the capital Kabul, and has killed a total of 7 people while injuring 76 others. The US military has launched [...]

The appellate body of the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday that the Turkish trial of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan was unfair , stating that Ocalan was not tried in front of an independent and impartial court. Turkey said it would address the trial's flaws and push for a retrial. Ocalan, convicted [...]

The investigations subcommittee of the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee reported Thursday that British Member of Parliament George Galloway and French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua both received Iraq oil kickbacks from Saddam Hussein under the UN oil-for-food program . The report claims that Galloway received an "allocation" for 20 million barrels of [...]

A colonel at the head of a military intelligence unit at Abu Ghraib prison has been reprimanded and fined $8000 in connection with the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Col. Thomas M. Pappas , commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, could have faced a court-martial, but the Army administered nonjudicial punishment and Pappas will not [...]

The US Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday approved an amendment to the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2005 (FAIR) which would guarantee that the sickest asbestos victims will be compensated the fastest. The FAIR Act, which has been delayed in the Senate for some time , creates a $140B compensation fund for asbestos victims [...]

No criminal charges are to be filed against the pilots of a Cessna 150 aircraft that flew into White House airspace Wednesday, prompting evacuations of the White House, the Capitol, and nearby federal buildings. For eight minutes, the alert level at the White House was raised to red, the highest terror alert, and agents directed [...]

The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005: Unequal Protection, Council on American Islamic Relations, May 11, 2005 . Excerpt (from the Executive Summary): Nearly four years removed from the 9/11 terror attacks, the greatest tragedy to befall our nation in modern history, our country has learned certain lessons that will hopefully [...]