The UN Human Rights Committee Friday urged the Sudanese government to "take all appropriate measures" to guarantee that all state agents, including the military and armed militias, discontinue "widespread and systematic" violations of human rights. The recommendations, presented in the panel's concluding observations , also call on the Sudanese government to end immunities in Sudanese [...]

US District Judge Edward Nottingham Friday sentenced former Qwest Communications CEO Joseph Nacchio to six years in prison and ordered him to pay the maximum $19 million fine and forfeit of $52 million in assets obtained through insider trading. Nacchio, who was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading in April, had faced a maximum [...]

The European Commission (EC) confirmed Friday that its Directorate General for Competition has sent a Statement of Objections (SO) to semiconductor manufacturing giant Intel , notifying the company that the EC believes it has abused its dominant position in the x86 architecture processor market to exclude its biggest rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) from the [...]

French magistrates have filed preliminary charges of "complicity in slanderous denunciations" against former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin , Villepin's lawyer said Friday. Villepin is accused of ordering a smear campaign against former political rival and current French President Nicolas Sarkozy as well as being responsible for several anonymous letters sent to a magistrate [...]

The United States and the European Union Thursday signed an agreement on the regulation of trans-Atlantic airline passenger data-sharing , allowing the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to continue using passenger data when the existing interim agreement expires at the end of July. Under the terms of the new agreement, air carriers will transmit [...]

A Nigerian court sentenced former state governor Dieprieye Alamieyeseigha Thursday to a total of 12 years in prison after Alamieyeseigha pleaded guilty to six counts of corruption and money laundering. Alamieyeseigha, who governed the oil-rich Bayelsa state from 1999 to 2005, has spent almost two years in custody. He will be eligible for release soon [...]

US President George W. Bush signed the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 Thursday, expanding the investigative scope of the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to include foreign investments in vital infrastructure and energy and adding an additional 45-day review of proposed acquisitions from foreign state-owned entities. [...]

Australian Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg ordered the dismissal of a terror charge against Dr. Mohammad Haneef Friday. Bugg said that after personally reviewing all materials in the case, there was insufficient evidence to establish that Haneef had recklessly provided material support to terrorists by leaving a subscriber identity module (SIM) with his second [...]

Former South Africa President F.W. de Klerk on Thursday denied having knowledge of or participating in crimes against opposition members while he was in office during the apartheid era, adding that South Africa should "look at the future" and refrain from engaging "persecution and retribution." De Clerk, who has refused to apply for amnesty with [...]

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Thursday contradicted testimony given by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales earlier this week concerning a 2004 discussion of intelligence activities. Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday that there was dissent within the administration concerning the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program expressed during the meeting, but Gonzales said [...]