The US Defense Department Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Service Academies released its report Thursday, announcing that, despite some progress, hostile attitudes and inappropriate treatment of women persist at the US Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Congress established the panel in response to a [...]

Following a one-day extension in negotiations on the Iraqi constitution , the speaker of the National Assembly said Friday that if consensus cannot be reached by the end of the day, the draft charter would bypass parliament and would instead be approved by an October 15 popular referendum. Hajim al-Hassani has said that the additional [...]

Leading Thursday's states brief, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law today a medical malpractice bill that he believes will lower medical malpractice insurance premiums. The bill will cap non-economic damages at $500,000 for doctors and $1 million for hospitals, allow the state to moderate the costs of malpractice insurance and require another doctor to [...]

A federal judge met with Justice Department lawyer Terry Henry Thursday to discuss why the US has not yet released two Chinese Uighur Muslims still held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp after the government determined they posed no threat to the US as enemy combatants . Henry met with US District Judge James Robertson [...]

AP is reporting that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament has announced a one-day extension for talks on the draft Iraqi constitution , originally scheduled to be voted on Thursday after being postponed for three days on Monday following a seven-day extension on the original August 15 deadline set down in the country's Transitional Administrative [...]

California's Attorney General Bill Lockyer said Thursday that the state is suing 39 pharmaceutical companies for concealing the actual costs of their drugs in an attempt to artificially inflate payments from California's Medicaid program. Lockyer said he added new drug companies including GlaxoSmithKline and Amgen to the state's prior complaint which named Abbott Laboratories and [...]

Iran said Thursday that it is working on a new proposal to negotiate with the West regarding its nuclear program, expressing an interest in negotiating with countries other than Great Britain, France and Germany. The three core negotiating countries cancelled a meeting with Iran scheduled for August 31 after the country resumed its uranium enrichment [...]

The chief observer of the European Union Election Observation Mission to Ethiopia 2005 (EU EOM) said Thursday that the country's May 15 parliamentary elections did not meet international voting standards. In the first EU report released since the vote, Ana Gomes said that intimidation tactics of witnesses and arrests of opposition members rose to the [...]

Two media rights groups called for US Middle East military commander General John Abizaid to release a Reuters journalist being held at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq unless the military can provide a valid explanation for his detention. Paris-based Reporters Without Borders and the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists have accused US [...]

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied the request of former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers' request to serve his 25-year prison sentence in a low-security facility near his Mississippi home, placing him instead in a medium-security prison in Louisiana. Ebbers was convicted earlier this year on nine counts of fraud, conspiracy and filing false statements [...]