A former Guantanamo Bay detainee filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the US military alleging that he was subjected to torture. Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak Al Ginco, a Syrian national who prefers the surname Janko, filed suit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia , the same court that ordered his release last [...]

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) and other participating countries on Wednesday released a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) , an international pact to defend intellectual property rights from counterfeit and piracy. The draft was released after three years and 10 rounds of negotiations among the ACTA parties, which include the [...]

Hungarian police on Wednesday initiated a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Ajka chemical spill to determine whether to bring charges against the plant owners for criminal negligence. The spill occurred Monday, releasing more than 20 million cubic feet of chemical waste , causing four deaths and 120 injuries, in addition to extensive ecological [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in the highly controversial case of Snyder v. Phelps on protests at military funerals. Reverend Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church have been traveling around the country picketing military funerals in recent years, claiming US soldiers have been killed because America tolerates homosexuals. The [...]

A federal judge on Wednesday barred key US government witness Hussein Abebe from testifying in the trial against former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani . Judge Lewis Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) held that prosecutors could not use Abebe’s testimony because it was the product of [...]

Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi filed an appeal Tuesday in Myanmar’s Supreme Court challenging the dissolution of her opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) under a controversial election law . Suu Kyi is asking the court to annul the part of the election law that bars political prisoners from participating in elections and also [...]

The Ethiopian government on Wednesday released former judge and political opposition leader Birtukan Mideksa from an Addis Ababa prison where she had been serving a life sentence. The Ethiopian Justice Ministry said that Mideksa, leader of Unity for Democracy and Justice , asked the government for a pardon last month, a claim that she later [...]

Commander of the rebel Mai Mai Cheka Lieutenant Colonel Sadoke Kokunda Mayele was arrested Tuesday by UN peacekeepers and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government forces for allegedly leading rebel groups in mass rapes in the DRC. The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) arrested Mayele under the mandate [...]

The human rights situation in East Timor has continued to improve over the last year, despite the need for further reform, according to a report released Tuesday by the UN Integrated Mission In Timor-Leste (UNMIT) . The report, Facing the Future, chronicles the human rights situation in the country between July 2009 and June 2010. [...]

Canadian military officer Captain Robert Semrau was sentenced Tuesday by a Canadian military judge for the killing of an unarmed Afghan insurgent, avoiding a possible five-year prison sentence. At his sentencing, the judge decided against prison time, but demoted Semrau and ordered him to be discharged from the military within 30 days. Semrau was convicted [...]