Valéry Giscard d'Estaing , a former French president and architect of the embattled European Constitution , has blamed current French President Jacques Chirac for the rejection of the document by French voters . In a New York Times interview published Wednesday d'Estaing complained that French voters rejected the charter not because they disagreed with it, [...]

German authorities announced Tuesday that they have detained three men who allegedly spent thousands of dollars to fund the Ansar Al-Islam terror network in its terrorist attacks in Iraq. On Tuesday more that 150 German police officers raided two dozen properties in Germany and one in Switzerland in a search for evidence that Ansar was [...]

A new memo may contradict previous denials by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that he played no role in the awarding of an oil contract in Iraq to a company his son worked for. Annan was cleared of any wrongdoing in March and rejected any possibility of resigning over that allegation or any other arising out [...]

The Pakistani government said Wednesday that gang-rape victim Mukhtar Mai has been removed from a no-travel list and is free to go abroad. In a case that has received international attention, Mai was gang-raped on orders from a traditional village council. Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sharpao announced that the decision to allow Mai to [...]

US House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI) said Tuesday that while he thinks that many of the temporary provisions of the Patriot Act should be made permanent, federal investigators should not be given the power to issue their own subpoenas for records, a power recently endorsed by a Senate committee . "Administrative subpoenas" [...]

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Sudan refused on Wednesday to drop charges against two members of Medecins Sans Frontieres . The two had been arrested and investigated for allegedly "spying, publishing false information, and destabilizing Sudanese society" in connection with an MSF report about hundreds of rapes in Darfur . The UN expected that [...]

In an effort to highlight human rights abuses in certain countries, President Bush has begun meeting with dissidents in an approach similar to the one taken by former President Ronald Reagan in his meetings with Soviet dissidents during the Cold War. Earlier this week Bush met with North Korean defector Kang Chol Hwan, who recently [...]

Spain announced on Wednesday the arrest of 16 suspected Islamic militants, including 11 fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and men training to carry out suicide attacks in Iraq. A statement from the Spanish Interior Ministry characterized the men as "extremely radical and dangerous," and said that five of the 16 had aided the terror [...]

US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter opens hearings Wednesday on the legal rights of detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay. Part of the agenda for the hearings is to examine the due process rights of the prisoners and the authority held by Congress to make certain they receive the necessary legal representation. [...]

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld briefing on the military detention center at Guanatanamo Bay and other subjects, June 14, 2005 . Excerpt: Allegations of abuse at Guantanamo, as at any other U.S. military facility, have been thoroughly investigated. Any wrongdoing is — wrongdoers are being held accountable. The U.S. military has instituted numerous reforms [...]