The government of Fiji Thursday lifted emergency regulations imposed on the country since unrest in early December. Military commander and self-declared interim Prime Minister Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama declared a state of emergency after overthrowing the government in a military coup on December 5. The emergency powers withdrew some rights protected under the Fijian constitution and [...]

Turkey's parliament Thursday passed for a second time a constitutional amendment allowing for direct election to the presidency, but complaints of balloting violations arose even before the vote finished. The main opposition party, the secularist Republican People's Party (CHP) , says it may petition the Constitutional Court as early as tomorrow regarding the disagreement over [...]

Zhao Bingzhi, president of the criminal law research committee of the China Law Society told China Daily Thursday that China is preparing to enact anti-terrorism legislation , which Zhao described as a "separate law" designed to provide a legal framework to better "fight terrorism." The Daily reported that legislation will be considered by the Standing [...]

Zdravko Tolimir , a former Bosnian Serb general and a UN-indicted war crimes suspect, has been arrested, according to Thursday media reports. Tolimir, a close aide to war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic , is charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, as well as various other crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the [...]

US District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Thursday that he will release more than 150 letters he has received in relation to next week's sentencing of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby . While Libby opposed the release of the letters, saying that the writers did not intend for them to become public, various [...]

FBI Assistant Director of Public Affairs John Miller said Wednesday during an interview with C-SPAN that an FBI report expected to be released next week will detail a nationwide increase in murders, robberies and other violent crimes for a second straight year. Miller said the report will likely show "a continued uptick in violent crime, [...]

Judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) who will preside over the Khmer Rouge genocide trials met Thursday to resolve remaining disputes between Cambodian and international jurists concerning the internal regulations of the tribunal. The meeting, announced earlier this month, is expected to continue for the next two weeks. Once the [...]

New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch signed a bill Thursday allowing same-sex couples to enter into civil unions with the "same rights, responsibilities, and obligations as married couples" beginning in January 2008. Lynch hailed the bill as a continuation of "New Hampshire's longstanding tradition of rejecting discrimination… dates back to the Abolitionist movement." The legislation passed [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 Wednesday that the brother of dissident Cyrus Elahi, assassinated in Paris in 1990, can collect on a default judgment he holds against Iran by attaching a $2.8 million judgment obtained by the Iranian Ministry of Defense against California-based Cubic Defense Systems . Dariush Elahi [...]

Hundreds of Italian prison inmates have sent a letter to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano asking him to restore the country's death penalty. More than 300 of the 1,300 prisoners serving life sentences signed the letter, "asking for our life sentence to be changed to a death sentence" because of the lack of any future beyond [...]