A series of almost simultaneous attacks and riots in seven of Guatemala's prisons Monday has left 31 inmates dead and many more injured. Guatemalan Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann said the gun and knife attacks at prisons around Southern Guatemala show the power that gangs have to spread terror. Vielmann says the inmates were able to [...]

In a Tuesday ruling, the Supreme Court of Israel temporarily halted government plans to demolish 30 synagogues and eight Torah academies in the Gaza Strip. The decision was in response to a petition from Elei Sinai rabbi Yishai Brohan requesting the buildings be moved to Israel proper. While the pullout officially began Monday , the [...]

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has decided to pardon Lena Baker , a black maid, 60 years after she was executed for killing a white man, board spokeswoman Scheree Lipscomb said Monday. Baker, found guilty by an all-white, all-male jury in Georgia, claimed she shot E.B. Knight, a man she had been hired [...]

Italy has arrested 141 people in an ongoing security sweep , begun expulsion procedures against 701 people, and questioned almost 33,000 people since last month's terrorist attacks in London and Egypt, Italy's Ministry of the Interior announced Monday. According to the Ministry's press release , the country has received several internet threats allegedly from Islamic [...]

Iraqi leaders confirmed Tuesday that key unresolved issues in drafting the Iraqi constitution lead to Monday's one-week deadline extension . According to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, the primary issues of contention are distribution of oil wealth and federalism; Shiite lawmakers are also saying that the unresolved issues include women's rights, the role of [...]

In a 1985 memo to White House counsel Fred Fielding released Monday, US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts stated that the Court's ruling in Wallace v. Jaffree , striking down an Alabama law mandating a one-minute period of silence for prayer or meditation as unconstitutional, "seems indefensible" and urged the White House to support a [...]

The Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, New York has failed to turn over videotapes showing interviews of aliens held on immigration charges during the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, US Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine said Monday. The facility was required to turn over the tapes as part of a 2003 [...]

After signing amended provisions of the Palestinian Basic Law relating to elections over the weekend, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced Monday that parliamentary elections delayed in July because of problems with the electoral law are now set for January 21, 2006. Palestinian Islamic resistance group Hamas had objected to the delay, and Abbas has expressed [...]

US Department of Justice attorneys asked a US District Court Monday to replace the judge presiding over an Indian trust class-action lawsuit filed in 1996. Class representatives in Corbell v. Norton are suing to force the federal government to account for billions of dollars belonging to approximately 500,000 American Indians and their heirs, and held [...]

In an interview with the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper to be published Tuesday, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel , whose country is scheduled to take over the six-month rotating EU presidency from the UK at the beginning of 2006, has suggested that EU countries make another attempt to ratify the troubled European Constitution in two [...]