Senate Republicans filed a motion Friday which starts the countdown towards the "nuclear option" – a procedure to wipe out the Democrats' power to block President Bush's judicial nominees. The motion would end the Senate debate for federal court nominee Priscilla Owen who was renominated by Bush after Democrats blocked her nomination in the last [...]

Leading Friday's international brief, two recently released polls indicate that popular sentiment is heavily against the proposed EU constitution in the Netherlands . Polls by RTL Television and Centerdata both put the likely "no" vote on the EU constitution at 51%-54%, with only 27%-29% likely to vote "yes". The Netherlands referendum on the EU charter [...]

A US military spokesman, responding to a New York Times article detailing the deaths of two detainees and other abuses, said Friday that mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan by US personnel will not be tolerated. A White House spokesman said that President Bush was alarmed by the report and wanted the allegations thoroughly investigated. The [...]

The French peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast has opened an investigation into allegations that four of its soldiers sexually abused a young girl in the rebel-controlled north. These are the first allegations of sexual abuse to be made against French forces since they were deployed in the country shortly after a civil war began in [...]

US President George W. Bush Friday threatened to veto any legislation that would ease restrictions on federally funded stem cell research . President Bush remarked that he was "a strong supporter of adult stem cell research" but that he was "very concerned about cloning." Citing the killing of human embryos, Bush banned new federal funding [...]

Government officials along with survivors paid respects Friday to the victims of the Khmer Rouge "killing fields" during the annual "Day of Anger." Last month the United Nations announced its support for genocide tribunals in Cambodia though a start date has yet to be set. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot instituted radical resettlement and re-education [...]

The state-run Ethiopia News Agency reported Friday that re-elections will be held Sunday in six polling stations where voting irregularities were found to have occurred. Further charges have been made by both the ruling party and opposition parties prompting the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia to continue investigating voting fraud. After the May 15 parliamentary [...]

In a version of a report to be released next Tuesday, Kosovo UN Governor Soren Jessen-Petersen indicates "significant progress" in security and in the area of minority rights under the Kosovo Standards Implementation Plan . Under the "standards before status policy," unveiled in 2003, satisfaction of these requirements would be the first step in permitting [...]

Former Rwandan mayor Laurent Semanza saw his appeal before the appeals panel of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda dismissed Friday and his prison sentence extended from 25 to 35 years. Semanza, once mayor of Bicumbi in Rwanda's rural province of Kigali, was arrested in March 1996 in Cameroon; he was the president of pro-Hutu [...]

The US military has strongly condemned a British tabloid's Friday publication of pictures of a semi-clothed Saddam Hussein that it says were taken "in clear violation of directives and possibly Geneva Convention guidelines for the humane treatment of detained individuals". The cover of The Sun displays a picture of the former president of Iraq wearing [...]