The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported Thursday that an Italian policeman has confessed to participating in the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric from the streets of Milan. The Italian government responded by denying any involvement in the abduction, and prosecutors say the Italian government is not under investigation. Last December, an Italian judge issued [...]

The US Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted 10-8 along party lines to send the circuit court nomination of White House aide Brett Kavanaugh to the full Senate for a confirmation vote. Kavanaugh, who has been nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, faced probing questions from committee members during a [...]

US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on Thursday announced a bipartisan agreement to resume debate next week on immigration reform, which also covers the 14 Republicans and 12 Democrats who will negotiate a compromise proposal with the House of Representatives. Last December, the House passed the Border [...]

US President George W. Bush on Thursday insisted that "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected" as the government conducts anti-terrorist surveillance in the US. Bush's comments were in response to a report in Thursday's USA Today that calling patterns of millions of Americans are being collected and examined by the National Security Agency [...]

The Libyan retrial of five Bulgarian nurses accused of infecting over 400 patients, primarily children, with the HIV virus, resumed on Thursday morning in Tripoli before being adjourned for procedural reasons until June 13. Prosecutors objected to defense lawyer Othman al-Bizanti's motion for the medics to be released on bail and presiding Judge Mahmud Huwaissa [...]

Less than a year before Germany takes over the European Union presidency in January 2007, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said again Thursday that she plans to revive the European constitution , on hold since major referendum setbacks in France and the Netherlands last year. Merkel told members of the German Bundestag in a major policy [...]

UK Home Secretary John Reid said Thursday that the government will appeal a Wednesday High Court decision to grant asylum to nine Afghans convicted of hijacking a plane to the UK in 2002, allowing them to remain in the United Kingdom rather than be deported to Afghanistan. Mr. Justice Jeremy Sullivan based his ruling on [...]

A committee of the American Bar Association has voted unanimously that judicial nominee Michael B. Wallace is "not qualified" to sit on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit . Wallace, a Mississippi lawyer and former aide to US Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) , has garnered criticism from Democrats and the NAACP among [...]

The US Department of Justice has ended the internal investigation into the role its lawyers played in the NSA's domestic surveillance program approved by President Bush. The investigation had been headed by the Office of Professional Responsibility until department head H. Marshall Jarrett revealed this week that it had been "unable to make meaningful progress" [...]

Former Enron executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling face an uphill battle after Judge Simeon T. Lake III agreed with prosecutors in the Enron trial Wednesday that jurors should be allowed to find both men guilty because of "deliberate ignorance" or the so-called "ostrich defense" with respect to conspiracy and fraud that contributed to Enron's [...]