A bill reflecting what was heralded as a key compromise on immigration reform has stalled in the US Senate. By a margin of 38-60 senators voted Friday morning against a motion to send the existing border security bill back to the Senate Judiciary Committee with instructions to include compromise language agreed to by Senate leaders [...]

Serbia has promised to deliver fugitive Bosnian war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia by the end of April, according to a court spokesman. A spokesman for ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said that Serbia had provided "clear assurances" that Mladic would be delivered to the tribunal [...]

Canadian Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said that he intends to fulfill a campaign promise and hold a free vote in the Canadian Parliament about whether to revive debate on a federal law permitting same-sex marriages that was passed last summer by the Liberal Party government of former Prime Minister Paul Martin. More [...]

The UN human rights chief in Haiti has accused the interim government of imprisoning 4,000 people "preventively" for months or years without facing charges or trials. According to Thierry Fagart, the human rights field officer in Haiti, many of the prisoners were arrested for political reasons after the February 2004 ouster of former president Jean-Bertrand [...]

Former immigration official Michael Maxwell testified about alleged widespread corruption and security vulnerabilities within the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) before the US House Committee on International Relations on Thursday. Maxwell, who resigned in February as Director of the Office of Security and Investigations at USCIS complained that because officials within USCIS did not [...]

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 [...]