A former official in the Chechen government has been arrested in connection with the murder of Russian journalist and rights activist Anna Politkovskaya , Russian media reported Saturday. The Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported that Shamil Burayev, a one-time district head in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, had been arrested by police Thursday and is [...]

Alberto Gonzales bade farewell to public service Friday, officially leaving the US Justice Department after a stormy 2 1/2 years as Attorney General. Gonzales resigned late last month in the midst of controversy surrounding the firings of several US Attorneys and subsequent allegations that he may have perjured himself in testimony on the matter before [...]

President Bush Friday signed what he described as a "minimal" ethics reform bill designed to force lawmakers to disclose pet projects and divulge more details about campaign contributions. The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 was passed last month in the Senate after being approved in the House in late July. Hailed by [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law says that the rejection of Duke law professor Erwin Chemerinsky by the administration of the University of California at Irvine as the new dean of its law school because he is "too politically controversial" is the latest chapter in the post-September 11 attack on [...]

Amnesty International and Reporters without Borders Friday accused Egypt of clamping down on freedom of the press after a court sentenced the editors of four tabloids for publishing criticisms of President Hosni Mubarak and the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) . Ibrahim Issa, editor of Al Dustour; Adel Hammouda, editor of Al-Fagr ; Wael Al-Abrashi, [...]

The United Nations Security Council has extended the mandate for International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte until December 31, the war crimes tribunal announced Friday. Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney general, has served two four-year terms as the ICTY chief prosecutor. She was initially expected to step-down in [...]

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice released the annual State Department Report on International Religious Freedom Friday, criticizing what it considered to be sharp decreases in religious freedom and an increase in religious strife in several nations, including Iraq. The report found that Iraqis' ability to freely practice the religion of their choice is severely [...]

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Friday that US President George W. Bush was a "war criminal" comparable to Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein and that he would eventually be brought before an international tribunal to answer for his actions. In a sermon at Tehran University marking the start of Ramadan, Khamenei accused the [...]

The White House submitted a new Benchmark Assessment Report on Iraq to Congress Friday, noting that little progress had been made by the Iraqi government toward accomplishing 18 "benchmarks" thought to be essential to Iraq's stability. The Initial Benchmark Assessment Report , submitted to Congress in July, had reported that the Iraqi government was making [...]

Zhao Yan , a New York Times researcher who was sentenced to three years in prison for fraud in August 2006, is to be released on Saturday, according to Chinese prison officials. A Chinese court convicted Zhao of taking $2,500 from a village official, but dismissed more serious charges of illegally leaking state secrets to [...]