The US has agreed to transfer the last three French citizens being held at Guantanamo Bay to France, with an official announcement of the agreement expected later Tuesday. The remaining detainees are Mustaq Ali Patel, Ridouane Khalid and Khaled Ben Mustafa, who have been held by the US since being arrested in 2001 and 2002 [...]

Secretary of Homeland Security nominee Judge Michael Chertoff has been confirmed by the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee , with a vote by the full Senate expected before the end of the week. Chertoff was confirmed by a vote of 14 in favor and one present. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) , the sole [...]

The introduction of a bill that would replace lawsuits against asbestos manufacturers with a $140 billion compensation fund will be delayed for another week, according to the legislation's author, PA Sen. Arlen Specter . Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Judiciary Committee members asked for an additional week to review the bill, which was previously [...]

The US remains undecided on whether to support a UN resolution on China's human rights violations, despite new evidence of improvement by the country, a US embassy spokeswoman has said. The resolution is expected to be considered at the meeting of the UN High Commission for Human Rights next month, as many Western governments have [...]

The White House has warned senators to pass a class action bill without changes as they began debate on the bill. S. 5 , which would transfer most interstate class actions to federal courts, also enjoys broad support in the House, which promised to pass the legislation and send it to President Bush if the [...]

Judge Theodor Meron, president judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia , has ruled that two British lawyers appointed to represent former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic may not withdraw from the case, despite Milosevic's refusal to cooperate and insistence on representing himself. The ruling was released Tuesday as the trial resumed after [...]

Indonesian prosecutors presenting their case against Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir asked a court Tuesday to sentence him to eight years in prison for terror charges, including a link to the 2002 Bali bombings. Prosecutors' sentence request was much lower than the maximum available, which would have been the death penalty, leading some to question [...]

A spokesman for Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said Tuesday that Sistani is not demanding that Iraq's new constitution be based solely on Islamic sharia law . Sistani's spokesman said "Sistani reiterates his previous positions that the constitution should respect the Islamic cultural identity of the Iraqi people." Tuesday's statement is meant to refute reports [...]

Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has given permission to Professor Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the sheep , a license to clone human embryos for medical research, only the second time the authority has given consent for therapeutic cloning . Wilmut will clone early stage embryos in order to study motor neuron [...]

New allegations of torture against detainees at Guantanamo Bay have been made at the trial of five former detainees in Morocco . The five Moroccan men, who were released by the US to local authorities last August, have all pleaded not guilty to charges of belonging to or assisting a criminal group that was preparing [...]