In a close vote Thursday, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) beat out stand-in GOP chief Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) to win election as GOP House Majority Leader , vowing to move the party away from recent ethics and corruption scandals. Boehner, who beat Blunt 122-109 on a second ballot, said that Republicans would now recommit to [...]

Michael J. Kelly : "President Truman used American involvement in the Korean War as justification for seizing privately owned U.S. steel mills when a labor strike threatened to cripple that industry and bring production to a halt – thereby threatening the country's continued ability to wage war. In short, the president used an external threat [...]

EU Justice Commissioner and European Commission Vice-President Franco Frattini intervened in the growing Islamic cartoons controversy Thursday, calling newspaper publication of caricatures of the prophet Muhammad "somewhat imprudent," while acknowledging that freedom of expression was a "'founding principle' of most European nations." In a statement from Brussels, he said:I can understand the feelings of indignation, [...]

The War Crimes Chamber of Bosnia's State Court on Thursday ordered suspected Bosnian Serb war criminal Dragomir Abazovic released from police custody due to a problem with his arrest warrant. Abazovic was arrested earlier this month by European Union EUFOR peacekeeping troops in a shootout that led to the killing of Abazovic's wife and the [...]

Four advocacy groups on Thursday filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of Haitian citizens, alleging that the US violated Haitian sovereignty by illegally preventing the flow of financial assistance and military supplies into Haiti in an attempt to destabilize the regime of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and eventually [...]

The UK government said Thursday that it will hold a full public consultation on whether prisoners should be granted the right to vote. The decision comes in response to a European Court of Human Rights ruling last year that the British ban on voting for prisoners violates the right to free elections protected by the [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked a federal judge considering a shutdown of the BlackBerry wireless email network to exempt government workers who rely on the technology. The DOJ submitted a list of 138 governmental agencies who rely on the BlackBerry network, including the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, to be given [...]

Efforts to amend the Florida constitution to ban same-sex marriage have faltered as supporters of an amendment failed to meet a Wednesday deadline to secure enough signatures to put the issue on the November ballot. The Florida Coalition to Protect Marriage made a last effort this week to get the required 611,009 signatures, but only [...]

The European Commission has told Germany and Luxembourg that the Commission is preparing to take legal action against the countries if they fail to bring national tobacco advertising laws into compliance with an EU directive which bans tobacco advertising in newspapers, on the radio and on the Internet. The Commission sent "reasoned opinions" to the [...]

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has denied allegations from Amnesty International that the government has unlawfully detained thousands of protestors as part of the latest anti-government crackdown. Amnesty has said that thousands of students from the Orono ethnic group have been detained in connection with protests over last year's disputed elections and that eleven of [...]