The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) on Tuesday called on the Nepal government to cooperate with an investigation into allegations leveled against Nepal Army Colonel Kumar Lama. Lama was arrested in the UK last week and is charged with two counts of torture during Nepal’s civil war in 2005. The charges stem from two separate [...]

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles on Monday was ordered to release its files on child abuse by its employees with full disclosure on all subject matter, totaling nearly 30,000 pages of documents and more than 200 priests named in the allegations. Judge Emilie Elias of the Superior Court of Los Angeles held that [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Tuesday announced a settlement with the federal government to provide full separation payment to service members discharged under the controversial Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) policy. The complaint , filed by the ACLU and the ACLU of New Mexico in 2010, did not seek to challenge DADT, but [...]

Amnesty International (AI) called Monday for Egypt to release an Egyptian journalist facing a military trial in the country. Mohamed Sabry, a journalist and blogger, was arrested Friday by the country’s military in the city of Rafah near the Egyptian-Gaza border. Sabry has been charged with trespassing and filming in a prohibited military zone. Under [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Kansas ruled Monday that a challenge to a 2011 Kansas law prohibiting insurance companies from covering abortions will go to trial. The law in question prohibits comprehensive insurance plans from covering any abortion other than to save a woman’s life but allows companies to [...]

The US Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases on Monday. The first, Descamps v. United States , concerned whether Matthew Descamps’ burglary conviction under California law can allow a conviction under federal burglary law, which had slightly different requirements than California’s statute. Federal judges used the “modified categorical approach” and looked at a limited [...]

The US Supreme Court denied certiorari Monday in Sherley v. Sebelius , which appealed a dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. The petition questioned President Barack Obama’s executive order in 2009 that removed the previous administration’s eight-year restriction on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. [...]

A Scottish court on Monday granted a request to extradite an alleged member of the Basque separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) to France. Benat Atorrasagasti Ordonez, who had relocated to Scotland in 2001, was sentenced in absentia by a French court in 2008 to five years imprisonment on charges of criminal conspiracy, carrying out [...]

The highest Bahraini appellate court on Monday upheld the convictions of 13 prominent pro-democracy protestors convicted by military tribunal in 2011 on charges of plotting to overthrow the monarchy. Bahrain’s Court of Cassation rejected the appeals of the 13 activists, all part of a group of 20 convicted by the military National Safety Courts after [...]

China’s Communist Party Politics and Law Committee head Meng Jianzhu on Monday notified Chinese media sources of the nation’s plan to end its 56 year-old “re-education through labor” program , which authorizes government entities to legally detain citizens for as long as four years without trial. The proposed legislation is pending approval from China’s National [...]