United Andhra Pradesh activists burn a portrait of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in Ananthapur, some 400km from Hyderabad on August 1, 2013   There has been an uproar in India's parliament over the decision of the ruling Congress party-led coalition to back the new state of Telangana.   Several MPs raised banners protesting against the move in the upper house, leading to a short ...

    Kuwait's ruler has endorsed a new cabinet that includes two women and seven members of the ruling al-Sabah family. The official Kuwait News Agency announced Sunday that Sheik Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah had given his blessing to the new cabinet that was announced more than a week after parliamentary elections saw the conservative Sunni trip make gains. The results, however, still left the 50-seat ...

  Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took the oath of office before parliament in Tehran on Sunday and was expected later in the day to name a cabinet he said would be chosen from figures across the political spectrum.   "In the presence of the holy Koran and before the nation, I swear to the omnipotent God to safeguard the official religion of the country and the Islamic Republic as well as the cou ...

    LEGISREPORTS NG - The Speaker of the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS Parliament, Senator Ike Ekweremadu has commended ECOWAS and the people of Mali  for the success so far recorded in the Mali presidential election.   The commendation came in a statement issued in Abuja on Saturday by the Special Adviser on Media to the Deputy Senate President, Uche Ani ...

LEGISREPORTS NG - The chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, has said al Qaeda appears to be behind a threat that has prompted several U.S. embassies in some countries to close on Sunday.     He disclosed that the threat on US embassies emanated from the middle east and Central Asia.     "It's my understanding that it is al Qaeda linked ... and the threat emanates in t ...

  Lawmakers in Taiwan have clashed in the country's parliament, ahead of a vote on a referendum on the construction of a fourth nuclear power plant.   President Ma Ying-jeou's Nationalist Party, which supports the referendum, exchanged blows with members of the main opposition - the Democratic Progressive Party.   Punches and water were thrown, and the doors to the chamber were tied shut. SOU ...

LEGISREPORTS NG - The United States Senate on Thursday has been condemned by China after it passed a resolution expressing concern about Chinese actions in the disputed East and South China Seas.   The U.S. resolution, passed on Monday, listed several examples of worrying Chinese behavior, including China's issuing of an official map defining the contested South China Sea as within its national border ...

 The Portuguese government won Tuesday a confidence motion, the first of its kind since the coalition government took power more than two years ago, in an apparent attempt to boost public confidence in the heavily indebted country. The confidence motion was approved by the parliament with 130 votes in favor and 92 against in the 230-seat parliament where the coalition government of PSD or the Socialist Demo ...

Attempts by the Kenyan government to water-down key reforms to regulate the country’s police force will allow human rights violations to continue and officers to act with impunity, Amnesty International warned today. Amendments to a police reform package are likely to be debated in Parliament this week. It was originally introduced to ensure that serious human rights violations committed by the Kenyan polic ...

  Togo's ruling party has won 62 of 91 seats in parliamentary elections, provisional results showed Sunday, allowing the ruling family to maintain its decades-long grip on power. The west African nation's constitutional court must verify the results for them to become final. The closest opposition party was the Let's Save Togo coalition with 19 seats, the results broadcast on state television by the el ...