The UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) announced Sunday that it will investigate allegations of voting fraud in last month’s legislative elections . The JEMB decision says that the instances of fraud, including ballot stuffing and proxy voting, were isolated, not systematic, and will not affect the integrity of the overall results. JEMB chairman Peter [...]

Lawyers acting on behalf of former New Orleans prisoners have filed papers asking the US Department of Justice to immediately assume direct supervision over a temporary holding facility at a closed juvenile prison in Jena, Louisiana, the source of more than two dozen complaints of prisoner abuse. Other affidavits filed by defense lawyers based on [...]

Connecticut joined Vermont Saturday as the second US state that recognizes civil unions for same-sex couples . The development was marked by special Saturday hours at Hartford’s City Hall , where 26 same-sex couples applied for their licenses. A New Haven spokesperson reported that only 10 couples applied for the licenses there on the first [...]

Yevgeny Adamov, the former minister in charge of the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) has gone on hunger strike in a Swiss prison, where he has been held since May 2. Adamov, 66, is demanding that Swiss authorities extradite him to Russia on fraud charges. He is also wanted by the US, and was [...]

US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad has started new negotiations with Shiites and Kurds in a last-ditch attempt to achieve a political compromise on the provisions of the draft Iraqi constitution creating a federal structure for the country. Humam Hammoudi, the Shiite head of the country's constitutional drafting commitee, said American representatives had met with [...]

The US Department of Defense announced Saturday the release of one Egyptian detainee from the prison at Guantanamo Bay after a military Combatant Status Review Tribunal determined he was no longer an enemy combatant. The unnamed detainee will be transferred back to Egypt. According to Saturday's statement, the military has thusfar transferred or released 246 [...]

The US military Saturday released a second group of 500 Iraqi detainees from Abu Ghraib prison following an earlier release of more than 500 detainees Monday , and a release of another 1.000 at the end of August. The military has not said whether the releases are directly connected with the pending October 15 national [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour announced Friday that she intends to send an official observer to the Uzbekistan trial of protestors accused of plotting a rebellion during the spring Andijan uprising in the east of the country. Arbour had already written to the Uzbek government requesting information on the accused detainees and [...]

The White House Friday threatened to veto a $440.2 billion defense spending bill if the Senate amended it to establish a national commission on detainee operations or include provisions regulating the detention, treatment, or trial of terrorists. In an official policy statement , the administration insisted that such changeswould interfere with the protection of Americans [...]

The General Counsel of the US Government Accountability Office issued a scathing opinion letter Friday criticizing the Bush administration's use of news media and commentators to promote education policies like the No Child Left Behind initiative as "covert propaganda" prohibited by law. GAO auditors also said that hiring public relations firm Ketchum Inc. to analyze [...]