Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party has won the most seats in Saturday's election for a special assembly charged with considering proposed amendments to the island country's constitution, a delicate task in light of recent reunification and independence controversies with mainland China. One of the proposed changes would see future constitutional amendments approved by popular referendum [...]

The head of Uzbekistan's Independent Human Rights Organization was quoted Saturday as saying that some 200 people were killed in the eastern city of Andijan Friday when government forces backed by tanks opened fire on demostrators in the central square of the city protesting government repression in the wake of a trial of 23 Muslim [...]

Officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced Saturday that the country's legislature has adopted a new constitution to replace the transitional document agreed to in South Africa in 2002 to end the DRC's brutal five-year civil war, said to have killed some 3 million people. The new national charter, which now must be [...]

A gathering of some 3000 Egyptian judges in Cairo Friday followed up threats first made in April and agreed by consensus to boycott the upcoming Egyptian national election unless the government gives them full and independent oversight responsibility. Judges are required by Egyptian law to supervise voting, but they have complained about executive rigging of [...]

Santiago v. Rumsfeld, et al., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 13, 2005 . Excerpt: We do not minimize the disruption, hardship and risk that extension of his enlistment is causing Santiago to endure. We also accept the fact that his claim not to be subject to the stop-loss order has [...]

Following up a 3-sentence order issued early last month , a panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Friday issued a full ruling upholding the US military's power to issue emergency "stop-loss" orders to keep soldiers on active duty beyond the time set in their service contracts. The court rejected the contention of [...]

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Friday in a statement that after the Senate completes deliberations next week on a highway bill he will put forward the hitherto-blocked nominations of Judges Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown for seats on the federal appeals bench, forcing a showdown with Democrats. He also indicated that if all [...]

Nine more people were killed in spreading anti-US riots across Afghanistan Friday despite new US assurances that American authorities would not tolerate disrepect for the Koran at Guantanamo Bay or anywhere else and Pentagon insistence that the reported desecretion of the Muslim holy book never happened at the detention camp and that Afghan rioting earlier [...]

The UK government announced Friday that it will propose new laws to combat fraudulent postal voting, a problem that arose in the recent national election when fraudulently-requested postal ballots prevented some voters from voting in person and the secrecy of the balloting process was called into question. The Queen is expected formally to call for [...]

A leading Pakistan daily reported Friday that 40 detainees released from US detention at Guantanamo Bay have been held without charges at Rawalpindi's Adiala prison for the past eight months. Pakistani law currently allows the detention of "Indian agents" in the country for a full year before bringing them to trial. The Pakistani government has [...]