A lawyer for the US Department of Defense (DOD) told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that US military treatment of detainees complies with Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions , even though the Bush administration had insisted until last week that detainees designated as enemy combatants were not entitled to Geneva protections. Responding to [...]

A group of Sunni legislators known as the Iraqi Accordance Front announced plans Tuesday to end their boycott of the Iraqi parliament after Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for unity. Members of the Front – the largest Sunni bloc, holding 44 of the 275 seats in the National Assembly – will return to legislative sessions [...]

Defense lawyers argued that Croatian journalist Josip Jovic should not have been prosecuted for contempt as his trial began Tuesday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. Jovic, editor of Slobodna Dalmacija , has pleaded not guilty to contempt of court charges for violating an ICTY injunction against publishing [...]

The government of Italy was not involved in and did not know in advance of the CIA's alleged extraordinary rendition of an Egyptian cleric , an Italian defense official told legislators Tuesday. The official, Giovanni Lorenzo Forceri, told Italian Senate committees investigating the alleged kidnapping that Italy has never "accepted or practiced" such techniques of [...]

A lawyer representing one of 17 Canadians arrested on terror charges in June argued Monday in an Ontario court that Canada's anti-terror legislation discriminates because it focuses only on "brown" Muslim and Arab groups and excludes "white" groups such as the Ku Klux Klan . Rocco Galati asked that the bail hearing for his client, [...]

President Bush again urged the US Senate on Tuesday to pass legislation allowing him to use a line-item veto to weed out what the White House has labeled wasteful spending. In White House remarks on the Office of Management and Budget's Mid-Session Review for 2006, Bush called for the Senate to approve the line-item veto [...]

The European Court of Justice Tuesday found former French prime minister Edith Cresson breached the obligations of her office by indulging in favoritism and abuse of office when she served as a European Commissioner in the 1990s. The European Commission referred Cresson's case to the court in 2004. The Court found that Cresson twice appointed [...]

Application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to the Treatment of Detainees in the Department of Defense, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, July 7, 2006 . Excerpt: The Supreme Court has determined that Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 applies as a matter of law to the conflict [...]

China has rejected a strongly worded UN Security Council official website] resolution responding to North Korea's missile launches earlier this month, instead proposing a mild resolution to encourage North Korea not to launch test-missiles. As with the tougher resolution, circulated by Japan on Friday, China's proposal would urge North Korea to stop developing missiles and [...]

A group of twenty retired military officers has submitted a letter to the US Senate Judiciary Committee expressing "deep concern" about the fitness of William Haynes II , the current Pentagon general counsel, to serve as a federal judge. The twenty officers, including former commander of US forces in the Middle East, Marine Gen. Joseph. [...]