French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said Thursday he was open to all proposals for resolving the month-long standoff with students and labor unions over the law establishing the First Employment Contract (contrat premiere embauche, CPE) , but gave no indication that he was going to withdraw the legislation as critics have demanded. Speaking at [...]

US House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) accused US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of "stonewalling" his committee on the topic of the NSA warrantless surveillance program during an oversight hearing Thursday on US Justice Department operations. Sensenbrenner argued that because the committee is responsible for overseeing the Department of Justice, Gonzales cannot refuse [...]

The State Department announced Thursday afternoon in Washington that the United States will not be seeking membership this year of the new UN Human Rights Council . A spokesman said in a press statement ahead of a scheduled daily briefing:There are strong candidates in our regional group, with long records of support for human rights, [...]

US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) , Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and eleven other senators announced Thursday that party leaders have hammered out a compromise immigration reform bill that both sides hope to submit for a floor vote before Friday. While all the details are yet unfinished, the bill in its basic form [...]

European Union diplomats on Thursday evening are expected to approve a travel ban on 31 high-level Belarus governmental officials, including the president, in reaction to the controversial March 19th presidential election and the subsequent crackdown on protesters . Over 600 protesters now face criminal charges . The visa ban will come into effect when EU [...]

The vice president of Russian oil giant Yukos , Vasily Aleksanyan, has been charged by Russian prosecutors with embezzling company funds and laundering money. Aleksanyan, who only took over as Yukos VP on Tuesday, headed up Yukos’ legal department before taking on the task of protecting the company’s assets and the interests of both creditors [...]

Former vice-presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told the federal grand jury investigating the CIA leak case that President Bush authorized his disclosure of intelligence information on Iraq, according to the government's response to Libby's third motion to compel discovery . Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald filed court papers Wednesday which reveal that Libby [...]

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has selected British lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan to serve as his provisional counsel in proceedings at the Special Court for Sierra Leone . Special Court Principal Defender Vincent Nmehielle on Wednesday issued a decision to appoint Khan, a specialist in international criminal law and human rights law, to defend [...]

Government summary of grand jury testimony by I. "Scooter" Libby, former Chief of Staff to US Vice President Dick Cheney on President Bush's 2003 authorization for Libby to disclose certain US intelligence information on Iraq's weapons program from a classified National Intelligence Estimate, as contained in Government's Response to Defendant's Third Motion to Compel Discovery, [...]

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani testified at the resumed sentencing trial of Zacarias Moussaoui on Thursday, describing the 9/11 attacks as he experienced them in his official capacity. He recalled being unable to grasp the extent of the calamity until he saw victims jumping from the windows of the burning World Trade Center [...]