Leading Thursday's international brief, in an immense demonstration of cooperation, over 200 African and international NGOs have made a collective appeal to the United Nations and the African Union to force Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwean government to cease "Operation Restore Order", the program of systematic evictions and arrests of illegal squatters and [...]

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Thurday that President Bush was willing to consult to a degree with Senate Democrats if a vacancy in the Supreme Court should occur. With widespread speculation of at least one opening on the court after this term, other White House officials nonethless noted that Bush will stick to [...]

City officials in Jerusalem said Thursday that they will ban the annual gay pride parade planned for the city next week to prevent offending Jerusalem's conservative religious communities. Parade organizers sought an intervention from the Israeli Supreme Court claiming that the ban ammounted to a violation of freedom of expression. A similar ban put in [...]

The national prosecutor's office in the Netherlands announced Thursday that three people have been arrested as suspected members of a terrorist organization. The two women and one man, all in their early 20s, are alleged members of Hofstadgroep, the group thought to be responsible for the shocking murder last year of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van [...]

The Kyrgyz prosecutor general's office said Thursday that Kyrgyzstan plans to deport a group of 29 Uzbek asylum seekers despite UN denunciation of four earlier deportations over the possibility that the returned individuals may face torture in Uzbekistan. A top Kyrgyz prosecutor referred to the refugees as "criminals" and said "they need to be punished, [...]

A group of 50 Sunni Muslim religious, political, and tribal leaders Thursday endorsed a list of 15 men to sit on a special committee to help draft Iraq's new constitution . The announcement ends any debate over whether improperly endorsed appointments should be deemed invalid. The 15 men, whose appointment was anticipated by a Sunni [...]

The US Food and Drug Administration has warned Texas Governor Rick Perry that a law he signed requiring the Texas State Board of Pharmacy to provide information about Canadian pharmacies may violate federal law . The agency would inspect up to 10 Canadian pharmacies and allow consumers to decide which ones were safe options to [...]

Military interrogators at Guantanamo had access to detainees' medical records until early 2003 and possibly later, and exploited information from the records during questioning, according to a new article in the New England Journal of Medicine . The authors, Gregg Bloche of Georgetown University law school and Jonathan Marksof of London's Matrix Chambers, known for [...]

Following the March Supreme Court ruling that juveniles may not be sentenced to death, Texas Governor Rick Perry has commuted the sentences of 28 offenders to life in prison. They will be eligible for parole after 40 years. Twelve other US states have juveniles on death row . The Houston Chronicle has local coverage.

Iraqi deputy prime minister Ahmad Chalabi said on Thursday that the trial of Saddam Hussein will begin within 90 days, before the end of September 2005. The government had previously stated that they wanted the trial to begin before the constitutional referendum scheduled for October 15. On Tuesday, Iraq's justice minister accused the US of [...]