The Arkansas Senate approved a bill by a vote of 26-8 on Thursday that would prohibit abortions after the first fetal heartbeat is detected, which could be as early as five weeks into the pregnancy. The bill, known as the Human Heartbeat Protection Act, would also require women to undergo a vaginal probe to detect [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called Thursday for an investigation into summary executions by Mali forces backed by the French. HRW alleges that the Malian government has summarily executed 13 suspected Islamist supporters and forcibly disappeared an additional five. The executions by Malian authorities came after Islamist armed groups reportedly executed seven Malian forces and used [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday rejected a request by Apple to ban sales of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone based on allegations of willful patent infringements. The Federal Circuit rejected Apple’s request to have the entire court reconsider imposing a ban Samsung’s smartphone before trial commences in March 2014. [...]

A military judge on Thursday ordered the removal of any monitoring system that censors the public broadcast of the 9/11 military commission hearings. The chief US military judge at Guantanamo Bay Colonel James Pohl noted that only he and the court security officer have the authority to turn on or off the light that would [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan (ALCUM) on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the state of Michigan challenging the state’s “Freedom to Work” legislation . The ACLUM was joined by various labor unions, including the AFL-CIO . The suit claims that while the legislation was debated and passed, the public was prohibited from entering [...]

Vietnamese authorities on Wednesday released and deported Vietnamese-American pro-democracy activist Nguyen Quoc Quan after nine months of detention. Quan was arrested on terrorism charges for planning protests in support of a banned group of US exiles, the Viet Tan . He was released following diplomatic pressure from the US. Vietnam and the US have been [...]

A Chinese court has sentenced two Tibetans for inciting self-immolation according to a Thursday report from Xinhua , China’s state news agency. The two men were charged with intentional homicide after inciting and coercing eight people to self-immolate, three of whom ultimately died. Lorang Konchok was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and has [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Thursday ordered the chief of the National Accountability Bureau , the government’s anti-corruption agency, to appear before the tribunal in regard to a letter he wrote that criticizes the court’s judges. The letter, written by retired Admiral Fasih Bokhari to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari , apparently accuses the [...]

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC) on Thursday adopted the first report by the International Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory which concluded that a multitude of violations have occurred. Titled “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan,” UN resolution 19/17 states [...]

Israeli forces should cease its use of live ammunition against civilians that may constitute excessive use of force, according to a statement released on Wednesday by UN Humanitarian Coordinator James Rawley. He expressed concern over the increasing number of civilians killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank . It was reported that since [...]