Leading Friday's international brief, Kenyan legal experts have raised concerns that Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki acted illegally and unconstitutionally when he sacked all 29 ministers and their deputies within 24 hours of his draft constitution being rejected by Kenyan voters . Kenyan Attorney General Amos Wako defended Kibaki's actions as valid under the current Kenyan [...]

British families of soldiers killed in Iraq petitioned the UK High Court Thursday for permission to launch a legal challenge against the government's refusal to hold an independent inquiry into the country's involvement in the Iraq war. Their group, Military Families Against the War , which called for an inquiry in May, argues that the [...]

Syria has requested a formal "cooperation protocol" with the United Nations which would govern the country's assistance with a UN investigation into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri . A draft given to the UN indicates that Syria wants chief UN investigator and German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis to only question suspects and [...]

The Dutch Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the Netherlands wants to secure a prisoners' rights guarantee in Afghanistan with its NATO allies, including the United States, before deciding whether to send additional troops there. Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot told parliament "We want very good guarantees. That is an important condition for the cabinet for [...]

New German chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that she plans to revive the European constitution , on hold since French and Dutch voters rejected the charter earlier this year. While indicating that the charter will be at the top of her agenda when Berlin assumes the EU presidency in 2007, the first woman chancellor said [...]

Austria has joined several other countries investigating whether the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted unauthorized flights through their airspace in 2003 while transporting terror detainees. An Austrian air force commander told state radio that a US transport plane traveling from Germany to Azerbaijan crossed Austrian airspace on Jan. 21, 2003. Austria refused to allow [...]

Defense lawyers in the Saddam Hussein trial announced Thursday that they will attend the next session of the trial scheduled for November 28 despite the recent assassination of two of their colleagues. The defense team had threatened to boycott the proceeding unless security was provided to both the lawyers and their families, which has not [...]

Members of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna agreed Thursday to pursue a Russian compromise proposal rather than report Tehran to the UN Security Council for its nuclear activities. Iran has refused to suspend uranium enrichment, claiming it wants to develop its nuclear power capabilities, not weapons. Moscow has proposed allowing [...]

A group of gay marriage opponents in Massachusetts said Wednesday they had gathered enough signatures to put a proposed constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage on the state ballot. The group, lead by the Massachusetts Family Institute and comprised of Christian and conservative activists, was required to gather 65,825 signatures before state lawmakers could decide whether [...]

The National Education Association (NEA) has promised to appeal a Wednesday ruling by a federal judge in Michigan dismissing its lawsuit challenging the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) . According to the complaint , filed by the NEA and individual school districts in Texas, Michigan and Vermont, school districts should not be forced to [...]