Iraqi officials have suspended business with the Australia Wheat Board (AWB) while an Australian judicial inquiry investigates allegations that AWB paid bribes of up to $300 million to the former government of Saddam Hussein in the oil-for-food scandal . The scandal prompted the resignation of AWB chief executive Andrew Lindbergh last week, after a document [...]

Presidents Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia and Xanana Gusmao of East Timor will meet this week to discuss a report alleging widespread human rights violations during Indonesia's 24-year occupation of East Timor. The meeting, originally to have taken place last month, was postponed after Gusmao delivered the report , issued by the East Timor Commission [...]

UK Chancellor Gordon Brown , widely expected to succeed Tony Blair as British Prime Minister before the next election if not sooner, delivered a major policy address Monday calling for a toughening-up of the Terrorism Bill currently before the UK Parliament. Insisting that the threat of terror had not abated, he said police should be [...]

The trial of former South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma for rape began in Johannesburg Monday, though proceedings were cut short when presiding Judge Bernard Ngoepe stepped down from the case. The defense had argued that Ngoepe's issuance of search warrants in relation to separate corruption charges Zuma is facing affected the judge's objectivity, but [...]

Five United Nations rights experts have concluded that detainees being held at the US prison base in Guantanamo Bay have been subjected to physical and mental abuse amounting to torture in some cases, according to an unreleased draft report obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The report is the result of an 18-month investigation ordered [...]

Geoffrey Corn : "The domestic surveillance debate took center stage on Meet the Press (Sunday, February 12th), as Senator Pat Roberts, former Senator Tom Daschle, and Representatives Peter Hoekstra and Jane Harman participated in a debate on the legality of this program (see here). Senator Roberts, a strong proponent of the program, reiterated the President's [...]

The top US Central Intelligence Agency counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he expressed opposition to CIA rendition practices in sending al Qaeda suspects to secret prisons for interrogation, according to intelligence sources cited in a UK Sunday Times report. Agency officials have said that Robert Grenier was terminated because he was "not quite [...]

Leading Monday's international brief, the Nepal Supreme Court has handed down an historic decision holding that the Royal Commission for Corruption Control (RCCC) , created by King Gyanendra following his dismissal of the elected government , is unconstitutional and ordering the body to cease and desist all investigations and prosecutions. The RCCC, which had been [...]

Saddam Hussein returned to court in Baghdad Monday, though he claimed in several outbursts that his appearance was forced. The former Iraqi dictator called the court trying him for crimes against humanity a "game" because it was formed during the US occupation of Iraq and demanded that the presiding judge sentence him in absentia since [...]

Lawyers representing a group of hurricane victims in New Orleans have asked a US federal judge to grant a temporary restraining order preventing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from evicting 12,000 families still left homeless from Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. FEMA announced on Saturday that it would begin to evict the families Monday [...]