Domestic guru and corporate high-flyer Martha Stewart left the women's prison in Alderson, West Virginia early Friday morning after being discharged at the end of her five month prison sentence for lying to investigators about stock trading. A few...

The Palestinian parliament overwhelmingly approved Thursday a new Cabinet made up primarily of professionals rather than politicians. Of the 24 members of the Cabinet, 17 are new, marking a departure from the Yasser Arafat era. The...

Citing a Government Accountability Office study, several lawmakers Thursday called for an end to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding homosexuals. The report , released Wednesday, indicated that the policy has hurt recruiting and retainment...

The US Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of Utah's so-called hate-crimes statute. The law, passed in 1992, differs from most other hate-crimes prohibitions because it does not protect an enumerated class of victims. Attempts...

An American Bar Association report has concluded that representation of indigent defendants in the United States is in a "state of crisis." The report illustrates examples of innocent defendants pleading guilty to serious crimes, most often because...

Lawmakers and interest groups reacted swiftly Thursday to US Senate passage of the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 , Leading House Republicans hailed the Senate vote and welcomed the...

Citing informants in China, a South Korean group has reported that North Korea has executed 70 refugees who were captured in China and subsequently returned to North Korea. The executions are believed to be an attempt to discourage further...

Reaction to Thursday's jury conviction of civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart for assisting client Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman to communicate with his terrorist followers has been somewhat mixed. The National Lawyers Guild to which Stewart belongs...

Six senior UN human rights experts joined Friday to express their continuing concern over the situation of detainees at Guantanamo Bay . In a statement released in Geneva, UN committee chairs and rapporteurs on arbitrary...

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday the human rights record of the Islamic government of Iran was "something to be loathed." Stopping short of calling for...