The Canadian Parliament will revisit the issue of same-sex marriage next week, with debate on a federal law permitting same-sex marriage scheduled to begin in the House of Commons Wednesday. The ruling Conservative...

The US government agreed to pay $2 million Wednesday in a settlement agreement with Brandon Mayfield, the attorney arrested and detained for two weeks in May 2004 after the FBI mistakenly established that his fingerprints...

Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) has settled fraud allegations under the False Claims Act , the US Justice Department said Wednesday, and has agreed to pay the US $8 million for allegedly...

Significant racial and ethnic discrimination and violence persist in European Union countries, according to a report released by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) Tuesday. According to the report, victimized...

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour told the UN Human Rights Council Wednesday in the aftermath of a controversial trip to the Middle East that "the human rights situation in...

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Massachusetts v. EPA , 05-1120, a case where 12 states and several environmental groups are challenging an Environmental...

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Wednesday urged the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to avoid the "political maneuvering" that plagued the rights body's predecessor, the UN Human Rights Commission , telling the 47 member states...

The South African National Council of Provinces has approved the Civil Unions Bill , legislation that would make South Africa the first African nation to recognize same-sex unions if President...

Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a land redistribution bill Tuesday that he hopes will allow his government to give 77,000 square miles of unproductive land to the country's poor. The president signed the...

A Serbian war crimes suspect will continue boycotting his war crimes trial, despite the urgings of his court-appointed lawyers, who have not had contact with him since Monday. Lawyers for Serbian war crimes suspect Vojislav Seselj [BBC profile; ICTY...