The European Parliament Tuesday Tuesday a joint proposal by several EU governments to retain phone and e-mail data for up to three years for use in anti-terror investigations. The parliament said the proposal from Britain, France, Sweden and Ireland that was introduced last year and pressed in the wake of the London bombings in July [...]

Influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has denied reports that he will issue a fatwa , or religious edict, telling Shiite Muslims to vote "yes" in the upcoming referendum on the Iraqi constitution . Rather, Al-Sistani said in a statement reported by the Pentagon-backed Iraqi TV channel al-Iraqiya that he only intended to invite [...]

Four merchant groups have filed an antitrust lawsuit against Visa , Mastercard , and dozens of major banks, over interchange fees, which retailers pay to issuing banks to receive payment for transactions involving the banks' cards. The fees, says Hank Armor of the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) , serve "as a hidden tax, [...]

The rate of illegal immigration into the United States has increased despite tighter security measures in place since the September 11 terror attacks, but only at a pace that parallels the rate of economic growth, according to a report released Tuesday. The report from the Pew Hispanic Center , a nonpartisan research organization, found that [...]

The US Supreme Court granted certiorari Tuesday in several cases, including a review of how states use tax incentives to attract companies that will create jobs in their regions. In DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. Cuno, the Court will consider an appeal of ruling from the Sixth Circuit that Ohio's investment tax credit program is unconstitutional. AP [...]

Two-thirds of the $1 billion distributed to US companies from 2001 to 2004 under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act (CDSOA) , otherwise known as the Byrd Amendment, went to only three industries – ball bearings, candles and steel – according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday. The law allows US companies [...]

Television and newspaper reports of widespread crime and violence in the days following Hurricane Katrina are proving to be largely unsupported or exaggerated, according to recent reports by journalists and officials. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported Monday that news stories of rapes, murders, sniper attacks and body counts after the hurricane have not been substantiated; [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, China's Supreme Peoples' Court regained the power to review death sentences on Tuesday, after nearly six months of intense criticism of the old process, which allowed regional courts to review death sentences. Chinese media highlighted nearly a dozen cases over the last six months of miscarriages of justice, including two sensational [...]

A woman who was ordered by a British court to destroy frozen embryos produced with her former partner is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights Tuesday, claiming the refusal to allow her to implant the embryos is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights , which protects the "right [...]

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif told newly-appointed US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes Monday that his government plans to lift the state of emergency that has been in place in the country for 24 years. Nazif told Hughes that the process would "take some time because it involves legal and constitutional challenges" [...]