Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev may soon face new charges over their handling of the oil company's affairs, according to a report Friday in the Russian newspaper Izvestia. Russian investigators are looking into allegations that Yukos' top executives and shareholders misappropriated $11 billion in assets by selling oil from [...]

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The incoming Iraqi minister for human rights designated by Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari rejected the post Sunday shortly after it and five other late Iraqi cabinet appointments were approved by Iraq's National Assembly. Hashim al-Shible, former Justice Minister in Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's government and a member of the Sunni community that largely [...]

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A leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood announced Saturday through his lawyer that he would run as a candidate against Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak in upcoming elections, although his party has not formally endorsed his candidacy. Essam el-Erian was arrested this week along with some 200 others during anti-government protests in Cairo . A Mubarak-sanctioned [...]

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Second Periodic Report of the United States of America to the UN Committee Against Torture, US State Department, May 6, 2005. Excerpt: …global terrorism has fundamentally altered our world. In fighting terrorism, the U.S. remains committed to respecting the rule of law, including the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, and international treaty obligations, including the Torture [...]

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Representative Henry Hyde, GOP chairman of the US House International Relations Committee now undertaking a Congressional review of the UN Oil-for-Food scandal, refused late Friday to hand back to the UN-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) probing the UN program sensitive IIC documents subpoenaed by Congress and handed over to US lawmakers by former IIC senior [...]

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The US DC Circuit Court of Appeals Friday upheld a lower court dismissal of a case brought by fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds alleging security lapses in the FBI's translator program. The lower court had said that Edmonds' case could reveal government secrets and harm national security as contended by Justice Department lawyers who had [...]

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