The principals of a US contracting company accused of defrauding the US government during the Iraq war will appear Tuesday in a federal court in Virginia in the first Iraq contract civil fraud case to go to trial. Scott Custer and Michael Battles were hired by the US government to help distribute a new currency [...]

Members of the Knesset , Israel's parliament, debated a draft national constitution at a special session Monday but came away sharply split. The Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee presented a 9,000 page report on CD containing various proposals for the Constitution, explanatory materials, and other supporting documents. Currently a series of Basic Laws provides [...]

Pakistani police Monday fired tear gas to stop approximately 7,000 students from protesting controversial and allegedly-blasphemous caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that have now been re-published in newspapers in Europe and around the world. The police took action to prevent students from marching on the Governor's residence in Peshawar, and the students also marched to [...]

Yahoo! Inc. issued a statement Monday supporting freedom of speech in China in anticipation of its Wednesday testimony before the human rights subcommittee of the US House Committee on International Relations. The company, along with Google , Microsoft and Cisco , has recently come under fire for cooperating with the Beijing government in efforts Setting [...]

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki Monday accepted the resignations of Education Minister George Saitoti and Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi in a televised announcement in connection with their role in two separate corruption scandals which angered foreign donors and damaged Kibaki's government. Saitoti is accused of playing a role in Kenya's largest corruption scheme, the billion dollar [...]

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) found that Greece failed to implement or comply with EU directives in twenty cases in 2005, the most of all European Union member states, according to statistics released Monday by the court. Greece was followed closely by Luxembourg, France, Germany, and Italy, while Sweden boasted the least amount of [...]

Members of the UN Stabilization Force in Haiti have fired on Haitians protesting election results , killing at least one protester and injuring four. Demonstrators supporting presidential candidate Rene Preval erected flaming roadblocks on Monday, demanding that the candidate be declared the winner in last week's election. Preval, a former president and close ally of [...]

An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Sunday confirmed the country's ongoing commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatened to walk away from the treaty on Saturday. Hamid Reza Asefi said that Iran would not accept the US and Europe using the treaty as a "political instrument," but said Iran "will cooperate [...]

In anticipation of the upcoming Commonwealth Games scheduled to start in Melbourne March 15, the Parliament of Australia has rushed through a bill making domestic deployment of the Australian Defence Force faster and easier in the event of a terrorist attack. The new legislation authorizes the Australian prime minister, defense minister or attorney general to [...]

In its final session before dissolution, the lame-duck Palestinian Parliament Monday gave Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas the authority to appoint a constitutional court empowered to cancel any law approved by the newly-elected Hamas-led assembly considered contrary to the Palestinian Constitution . The move is seen by many to be a concerted effort by the [...]