Iraq's Interior Minister Saturday announced additional security measures for the pending January 30 election as insurgent groups increased their attacks and vowed to disrupt the vote. Baghdad International Airport will now be closed from January 29-30, nighttime curfews already in force in Baghdad and other cities will be extended, travel between provinces will be stopped, [...]

Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko was sworn in Sunday as the new president of Ukraine , succeeding the outgoing Leonid Kuchma. Yushchenko won a December 26 re-vote against opponent and former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych after the results of the original November 19 ballot favoring Yanukovych were thrown out by the country's Supreme Court following [...]

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has canceled plans to fly to Germany in February to attend the Munich Conference on Security Policy , giving rise to speculation that the cancellation is connected with a war crimes complaint brought against him in the German courts in November and currently under investigation by the federal prosecutor's [...]

Updating a report from earlier today in JURIST's Paper Chase, the official IRNA news agency is reporting that Gholamhossein Elham, a spokesperson for Iran's Guardian Council, has rejected reports that quoted him saying women could run for president. IRNA quotes Elham as stating "My perspective on the Guardian Council's viewpoint on political and religious 'rejal' [...]

A spokesman for Iran's hard-line Guardian Council indicated Saturday that women can run in June's presidential election . The council ruling clears up an ambiguous aspect of the Iranian constitution which states that the president must be elected from among political "rejal," an Arabic word that can be interpreted as men or the more gender-neutral [...]

Voters in the Maldives went to the polls Saturday to elect a parliament three weeks after the Indian Ocean tsunami delayed voting. The small island chain has been under the control of Asia's longest serving ruler, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom since 1978 and new concerns about intimidation and aid allocation being linked to favorable votes have [...]

The International Organization for Migration which runs the Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program announced Saturday that it has extended by two full days the registration period for overseas absentee voting in Iraq . Registration, scheduled to end Sunday, will now continue through Tuesday because turnout is currently far below expectations. Fewer than one in ten eligible [...]

At a court martial that resumed Friday at a British military base in Osnabrueck Germany after the defense requested a temporary halt , a lawyer for one of three British soldiers charged with abusing Iraqi detainees accused their commanding officer, Major Dan Taylor, of issuing the orders that led to the abuse. Corporal Daniel Kenyon [...]

The second largest bank in the nation, JP Morgan Chase & Co. , has publicly disclosed that two of its predecessor banks had received thousands of slaves as collateral prior to the Civil War. JP Morgan offered a formal apology letter Thursday and said it was creating a $5 million dollar scholarship fund for African-American [...]

Iraq's interim defense minister said Friday that the government would arrest prominent Iraqi National Congress party leader Ahmad Chalabi after the end of the Muslim festival of Eid on Sunday for maligning him and the country's defense ministy. Hazim al-Shaalan told Aljazeera TV that "We will arrest him and hand him over to Interpol." Chalabi [...]