The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) committed “grave violations of international humanitarian law” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the end of 2014, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported Wednesday. The report claims that the ADF, a Ugandan rebel group, has committed war crimes and crimes against [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urgently called on all parties in Burundi to “exercise calm and restraint” amid reports of a coup taking place in the Burundian capital. The coup reportedly took place after President Pierre Nkurunziza left for a summit intended to resolve the crisis. With planned elections not far ahead in the [...]

A Moscow court on Wednesday declined authorities’ request to convert opposition activist Aleksei Navalny’s suspended sentence into a prison term. Navalny is a Russian opposition activist and blogger who was given a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence after being convicted in December of fraud. Navalny is believed to have been one of the main actors behind the [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report Wednesday detailing the continued abuse of criminal suspects by Chinese police. The interviewed detainees reported instances of torture, including being shackled to a “tiger chair” for days and being hung by the wrists. Despite detention reforms in China, including making evidence obtained through torture inadmissible, the interviewed detainees [...]

The director-general of UNESCO, Irina Bokova , continued her campaign against the looting and destruction of archaeological sites in the Middle East at a conference in Cairo on Wednesday and condemned the destructive act as a “war crime.” She declared the action a “tactic of war” and called for an end to the smuggling of [...]

The Pennsylvania Senate voted Tuesday to approve a bill that could bring medical marijuana to the state. The bill will now head to the House for consideration where proponents are optimistic it will have more success this year than the bill’s predecessor last year. The 40-7 vote came following a brief discussion on the bill. [...]

Eight supporters of former Egpytian president Mohamed Morsi were sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for illegal protests and acts of violence committed in Cairo’s eastern Al-Marg district in July 2014. The defendants allegedly chanted against the army and the police, in addition to damaging public areas and blocking the road in Al-Marg. After [...]

Mentally disabled prisoners experience “unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force” at the hands of prison staff across the US, said a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) . The report found excessive force used in many instances when prisoners exhibit behaviors that are characteristic of their mental illness and even when this behavior [...]

A judge for the Lueneburg state court in Germany said the trial against a 93-year-old former Auschwitz guard can resume, finding him fit to stand trial. Oskar Gröening was charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and faces a maximum of 15 years in prison for processing the belongings of the victims and supporting [...]

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for a rewrite of the Patriot Act , including elimination of the National Security Agency (NSA) phone data collection program. Obama’s call follows a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit , which found that the Act does not authorize the NSA to collect [...]