The US Sunday released approximately 80 Afghan detainees from custody at Bagram airbase north of Kabul and delivered them to the Afghan Supreme Court, where officials put them on buses home. The detainees were taken in after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. The US is currently holding about 500 Afghans at Bagram [...]

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Thousands of Russians, many of them pensioners, marched in several major cities Saturday continuing four days week of protests against the Putin government's repeal of a Soviet-era social benefits law and its replacement by a program of minimal monthly payments. Under the old law, formally repealed January 1, some 32 million Russian pensioners, veterans and [...]

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Forty-six members of the Palestinian election commission resigned en masse Saturday, claiming that they had been improperly pressured to change procedures in the midst of the January 9th presidential vote. Senior commission officials claimed that campaign and intelligence officials associated with victorious candidate Mahmoud Abbas , sworn in Saturday , were behind the move to [...]

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Following up on a JURIST report from Thursday, Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said Saturday she won't respond to a court summons from an Iranian Revolutionary Court in spite of the risk of arrest. "The manner in which the summons has been arranged is illegal. I won't go to the court," Ebadi told [...]

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Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell ordered an investigation Friday into whether political commentator Armstrong Williams improperly failed to disclose that he was paid by the Bush administration to support the president's education plan. Williams was paid $240,000 as part of a commitment the Department of Education had with public relations firm Ketchum to promote [...]

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Daniel Tokaji, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University: "While some advocates are looking to Congress to fix some of the problems that emerged in the 2004 election, this report from electionline.org suggests that they may have better luck in the states. House and Senate staffers suggest that Congress isn't in much of a mood [...]

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