Pakistan's chief election commissioner Abdul Hameed Dogar Wednesday promised to take swift and severe action against anyone prohibiting women from accessing polls in next week's local government elections. Dogar said he would go so far as to cancel results in areas where women were barred from casting votes. The statements come after the country's North [...]

Public Advocate of the United States , a right-wing group based in Virginia, announced Wednesday that they would become the first conservative group to oppose the nomination of John Roberts to the US Supreme Court. The group is protesting his behind-the-scenes work on Romer v. Evans , a 1996 case where the Supreme Court overturned [...]

Russian Federal Prisons Service director Yuri Kalinin said Wednesday that the transfer of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky to a larger cell with more inmates was "normal prison procedure" and not a form of punishment. Lawyers for Khodorkovsky said earlier this week that he had been denied access to newspapers and television and moved to [...]

Britain's Conservative Party leader Michael Howard Wednesday joined an earlier call by former UK Home Secretary David Blunkett for the British courts not to interfere with Parliament's efforts to enact new anti-terrorism laws. Prime Minister Tony Blair has made some controversial proposals, including advocating a possible amendment to the Human Rights Act if it interferes [...]

After his arrest in Buenos Aires earlier this week, Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader Milan Lukic agreed Tuesday to be extradited and face new charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia , according to court papers. The UN court says that Lukic will face charges of crimes against humanity and violations of laws [...]

The Delaware Court of Chancery ruled in favor of Disney executives Tuesday in a shareholder suit that alleged that the Disney board violated their duties by ratifying a 1996 decision to fire former company president Michael Ovitz with severance. Shareholders filed suit objecting to the $140 million severance package given to Ovitz, who only held [...]

According to wire reports, the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that seals at Iran's Isfahan nuclear facility have been broken , allowing Iran to fully resume its uranium conversion activities. The IAEA held an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss how to handle Iran's resumption of its nuclear program. The US and the EU are [...]

The California Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District Tuesday rejected an appeal to have a measure backed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that would change the redistricting process in California included on November's special election ballot. The ballot measure, Proposition 77 , is a voter initiative that seeks to take the redistricting responsibility away [...]

Speaking as part of a panel on the independence of the judiciary at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association Tuesday, US Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said that controversial rulings on divisive issues like the rights of homosexuals and capital punishment have created a surge in political reaction that is threatening the independence [...]

Former WorldCom accounting director Buford Yates was sentenced to a year and a day in prison on Tuesday for his role in the company's billion-dollar business fraud. In 2002 Yates pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to conspiracy and securities fraud charges for his part in a scheme to defraud investors by falsifying WorldCom's financial [...]