The National Telecommunications Commission in the Philippines has ordered cable operators to shut down all chat rooms, in response to complaints that some had become sex channels. The NTC commented that some chat room operators were not regulating the use of profane language or explicit messages in their facilities. The Philippine Daily Inquirer has more.

Jerzy Urban, editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly newspaper Nie , was convicted by a court in Warsaw Tuesday for criticizing Pope John Paul II . Jerzy was found guilty of insulting a head of state, and was fined $6,500. In his 2002 article, titled "Walking Sadomasochism", Urban referred to the Pope's as "the Brezhnev of [...]

Iran's highest official, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , told hard-line lawmakers in parliament Tuesday to stop the impeachment of cabinet members appointed by reformist President Mohammad Khatami . Ali Khamenei's statement, a rare public political comment, was reported by the Iranian news agency. Conservative lawmakers who won election to parliament last year have already impeached one [...]

The US government has joined the entertainment industry in arguing before the US Supreme Court that file-sharing services such as Kazaa and Grokster, accused of enabling widespread copyright infringement, should be shut down. Acting Solicitor Paul D. Clement filed a brief in support of the entertainment industry late Monday. In MGM Studios v. Grokster, 04-480, [...]

A group of seven federal judges will meet in Fort Myers, FL, Thursday to consider how to handle mounting lawsuits over the painkiller Vioxx , which was pulled from the market by manufacturer Merck & Co. after it was linked to increased risk of heart attack and stroke. The company is already the subject of [...]

Voter registration by Iraqi nationals in other countries will likely tally 25 percent of the estimated 1.2 million eligible when it closes Tuesday, according to officials organizing the foreign voting program. The Iraq Out-of-Country Voting Program allows Iraqi nationals living abroad to register and vote in Sunday's elections in 14 designated countries, including the US, [...]

Four British men held at Guantanamo Bay for three years as enemy combatants were returned to the UK Tuesday, after a deal was reached between the US and UK. The four men, Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga, Richard Belmar and Feroz Abbasi , were the only remaining Britons being held at the prison and had previously [...]

More complaints of abuse of Iraqi detainees by the US military have surfaced, including reports of electric shocks and sodomy, according to newly obtained military documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union . While it is unclear how many of the reports detail new instances of abuse, the ACLU charged the military Monday with [...]

In the latest of a string of attacks on Iraqi officials in Baghdad, an Iraqi judge was killed outside his home Tuesday morning, according to police. Sources said the judge, Qais Hashim Shameri, and his son were killed in a roadside ambush. Violence against Iraqis has increased in the past several weeks, as insurgent forces [...]

In Tuesday's international brief, Southern Sudan officials Monday ratified the proposed peace treaty between the now-autonomous South and the Khartoum government of the north. The 224-seat National Liberation Council, the legislative branch of the now-ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement , met over the last two days and voted Monday to ratify the treaty. The document [...]