A Nigerian federal court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Bring Back Our Girls group , saying that the police had no right to block protests in Nigeria. Earlier this year the Bring Back Our Girls activists began daily sit-ins at the Unity Fountain in the capital city Abuja to press their demands for [...]

Argentina’s lower house of Congress on Thursday passed a highly criticized bill for a new Hydrocarbons law. The lower house, controlled by allies of President Cristina Fernandez , passed the bill with a vote of 130-116 with one abstention after 14 hours of debate. The bill seeks to promote foreign business investments in exploration and [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Thursday that Islamic State (IS) militants carried out mass executions of Shiite inmates in Iraq after seizing the Badoush Prison near Mosul in June. According to reports from survivors, Shiite, Kurdish, and Yazidi prisoners were separated from Sunni and Christian prisoners , who were later returned to Mosul and set [...]

A court in Denmark has convicted Gottfrid Svartholm Warg , the co-founder of the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay (TPB) , and an accomplice for stealing Danish public records from the US-based information technology business CSC . From April to August of 2012, Svartholm Warg and his accomplish are alleged to have hacked into the [...]

A British court ruled Thursday that a former Libyan military commander can sue the British government for its alleged role in his detention and rendition. In 2004, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife were arrested in Bangkok, Thailand and returned to Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, where he spent years in prison. Belhaj first filed the lawsuit [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday praised the launch of a global media campaign against female genital mutilation (FGM) stating that “nding FGM is part of the UN’s unwavering campaign for the health, human rights and empowerment of women and girls.” The Secretary-General acknowledged anti-FGM campaigns in the United Kingdom, the United States, The Gambia [...]

The Spanish state adviser on Thursday announced support for a veto of a watered-down Catalan vote on independence planned for November 9, making it likely that the Spanish government will attempt to have the Catalan “consultation of citizens” blocked by the courts. Spain’s Council of State unanimously decided that the government should ask the Constitutional [...]

Rival militias in Libya are committing serious human rights abuses, including war crimes, according to an Amnesty International (AI) report released Thursday. According to AI since July 2013, “militias and armed groups have launched indiscriminate attacks in urban areas of the capital, Warshafana (southwest of Tripoli) and Zawiya with complete disregard for civilians and civilian [...]

The UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) on Thursday urged Israel to investigate alleged violations committed by its forces during the recent wars in Gaza to ensure justice. Israel’s latest attacks in the Gaza Strip, the third in only seven years, resulted in more than 2,100 deaths. Many of those hurt or killed in the 51-day [...]

A judge for the Oklahoma County Court on Wednesday permitted a state law that restricts drug-induced abortions. The law, passed in 2012, limits medication abortions to the first seven weeks of a woman’s pregnancy. The Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice and Reproductive Services in Tulsa challenged the law, claiming it placed unconstitutional restrictions on women. [...]