Leading Thursday's international brief, 54 residents from a state-created squatter settlement on the northern border of Zimbabwean captal city Harare have taken their attempt to prevent the government from demolishing their homes to the nation's Supreme Court. Residents of the Hatcliffe Extension, which houses several hundred families and was created by the Zimbabwean government in [...]

Concluding a four-day party congress Thursday, Syria's ruling Baath party called for political reforms and a broadening of press freedom in an effort to move away from the emergency law in place since the party took power in 1963. Though an immediate abandonment of the emergency law is not expected, Baath party officials say that [...]

Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said Thursday that the trial of Saddam Hussein will commence in a "matter of months" and Hussein may face the death penalty if convicted in a fair trial. The death sentence was suspended in Iraq in 2003 under the US Coalition Provisional Authority , but was afterwards reinstated by the [...]

US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said Thursday that the US would release $10 million in economic aid to Serbia that had earlier been frozen due to Washington's unhappiness with Serbia's apparent unwillingness to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia . Read the State Department press release. The change in policy [...]

Despite increasing pressure to close the US military prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday that the government did not have any plans to shut down the facility any time soon. Rumsfeld told a NATO news conference that the move to close Guantanamo Bay would raise many more [...]

The Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe released a report Thursday criticizing the United Kingdom's treatment of terrorist suspects in custody at Belmarsh Prison . In an accompanying press release, the CPT said that its visit to the facility in March 2004focused on the impact of the conditions [...]

Lawyers for Mikhail Khodorkovsky , former CEO of Russian oil firm Yukos , appealed his conviction on tax evasion and fraud charges Thursday to the Moscow City Court. Khodorkovsky was sentenced to nine years in prison on May 31 after a marathon twelve-day reading of the verdict against him. Khodorkovsky's defense team has said that [...]

As part of an administration effort to rally support for reauthorization of key provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire later this year , President Bush Thursday credited the Act with helping to secure the convictions of over 200 suspects and denied that it impinged on civil liberties. In remarks at an Ohio police [...]

Qatar's new constitution came into force Thursday, replacing the provisional constitution of 1970. The new charter permits parliamentary elections and provides the citizens of Qatar with the power to elect two-thirds of those members. The Emir will appoint the remaining one-third. A referendum held in April 2003 showed 99.6% support for the draft and the [...]

Recently appointed US Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Coordinator for Iraq Richard Jones said Thursday that Iraq should look to Malaysia as a model for the development of the Iraqi constitution. Jones pointed out that both countries have dealt with tensions resulting from multi-religious and multi-ethnic populations and both have had problems with insurgents. [...]