US Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) , chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee , said Thursday that he is considering proposing legislation that would suspend funding for the NSA domestic surveillance program if the Bush administration continues "walking all over Congress." Specter said that he is unsatisfied with the answers on the program that administration officials [...]

American-educated Saudi and alleged al Qaeda suspect Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi denied before a pre-trial military commission hearing at Guantanamo Bay Thursday that he was guilty of war crimes , but said he was "willing to pay the price" – possibly decades in jail – for admittedly fighting against the United States. Sharbi asked to [...]

Several US states, cities, and environmental groups led by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit Thursday against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit claiming the EPA has violated the federal Clean Air Act by failing to regulate carbon dioxide pollution from new [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 4-3 Thursday that it is constitutional for a judge to require a convicted sex offender to turn over DNA samples to the Canadian National DNA Data Bank , even if the offender was convicted before the enactment of the 2000 law establishing the bank. The Court's decision reversed a [...]

US District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Thursday rejected a motion to dismiss criminal charges against former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in connection with the leak of former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. Libby had asked that the case be dismissed because Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was improperly appointed to head the CIA [...]

Over one-third of documents held by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) that have been removed from public access since 1999 should not have been reclassified, according to an audit conducted by NARA's Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) . ISOO head J. William Leonard and National Archivist Allen Weinstein said that over 25,000 records [...]

China has not overlooked human rights abuses in its quest to find energy sources for its growing economy, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday. Spokesman Qin Gang said China emphasized peace, cooperation and development and that trade with China actually helps improve conditions in struggling countries. Anti-poverty and human rights activists have accused China [...]

Leading Belarusian opposition figure Alexander Milinkevich was arrested Wednesday along with other demonstrators at a rally in Minsk, according to activists. About 7,000 opposition members gathered for what is traditionally the largest rally of the year in Belarus on the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. At the rally, Milinkevich was reportedly put in a [...]

A US Senate panel conducting an investigation into the federal response to Hurricane Katrina has concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be abolished and replaced with a new federal agency with more authority over emergency preparedness. The bipartisan panel recommended 86 changes, including the creation of the National Preparedness and Response Authority, which [...]

Leading Thursday's international brief, Uganda's chief prosecutor Simon Byabakama Mugenyi told the High Court where opposition leader Kizza Besigye is being tried on treason charges that files detailing the intelligence gathering efforts against Besigye have been "misplaced." Mugenyi was supposed to produce the document Tuesday after state witness Lt. Migadde Ssemakula claimed to have submitted [...]