A study by the independent Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission , headed by former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix , has called for a total ban on the possession and use of nuclear weapons . At a UN press conference, Blix said the report, titled “Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological [...]

After re-examining the costs of cleaning up remaining oil from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill , the US Justice Department and the state of Alaska said Thursday that they would use a "reopener" provision in an earlier agreement with ExxonMobil and seek $92 million in unforeseen damages. "After extensive review it is clear that populations [...]

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has agreed to support President Bush's deployment of National Guard troops along the Mexican border by sending 1,000 Guard members from California to join the effort. As part of the agreement, the federal government will reportedly cover the cost of sending the troops, who will aid the US Border Patrol. Schwarzenegger [...]

AP is reporting that a military jury has found US Army Sgt. Santos A. Cardona guilty of abusing detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison . Cardona was charged with maltreatment of prisoners, dereliction of duty and assault in connection with the use of unmuzzled dogs when questioning detainees at Abu Ghraib. Sgt. Michael Smith was [...]

A spokesperson for German spy agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) on Thursday said that a low-ranking agent knew in January 2004 that German citizen Khalid el-Masri had been arrested in Macedonia and turned over to American authorities, but failed to report the story to his superiors. The spokesperson said the agent overheard a conversation in a Macedonian [...]

Defense lawyers in the Saddam Hussein trial on Thursday accused US and Iraqi officials of illegally detaining four witnesses who testified Wednesday that chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Musawi had tried to bribe them to testify against Hussein , and that Musawi was present for a 2004 celebration of the Dujail massacre that is at issue in [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday issued an order lifting the confidentiality of its health records for Slobodan Milosevic , the former Yugoslav leader accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity who died suddenly in the ICTY detention facility at Scheveningen on March 11, in the fifth year of [...]

The Swedish Riksdag has approved a law that could allow the country to incarcerate former Liberian President Charles Taylor if he is convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) , government officials said Thursday. The parliament gave unanimous approval Wednesday to an agreement with the SCSL, which will take effect July 1, that [...]

An additional 14 Guantanamo Bay detainees have gone on hunger strike, Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand said Thursday, bringing the total number of detainees on hunger strike to 89 after it was announced Monday that the number of detainees on hunger strike ballooned from three to 75 . Six of the 89 hunger strikers are being [...]

A federal judge on Thursday ordered Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum to comply with discovery requests related to a lawsuit filed by legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) against the Department of Justice seeking to reveal why the government suddenly lowered its demands for relief in its landmark civil racketeering case [...]