The UN Security Council on Wednesday began considering several options to help counter ongoing piracy off the coast of Somalia , including the creation of a new international tribunal. In a report released last week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon suggested that the UN must establish, or continue to help countries establish, the means to prosecute [...]

Croatian authorities on Wednesday extradited a man to Serbia for his connection with the 2003 assassination of former Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic . Sretko Kalinic was discovered by authorities in Zagreb in June after he was shot by a member of the Zemun gang, a Serbian organized crime ring. Kalinic, a dual citizen of [...]

Wal-Mart petitioned the US Supreme Court Wednesday to reconsider a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirming class action certification in a gender discrimination case. The company has asked the court to examine whether the appeals court’s April ruling was proper under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of [...]

A panel of the Ugandan Constitutional Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that a law criminalizing sedition violates the guarantees of free speech and freedom of the press under the Ugandan Constitution . The law made it a crime to say or publish statements that promoted hatred, contempt or disaffection for the Ugandan government, president or judiciary [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Wednesday criticized methods used by the government of Yemen in counter-terror operations as violations of human rights. In a report, “Yemen: Cracking Down Under Pressure,” the rights group accused the government of perpetrating numerous human right abuses in attempting to quell the rebel movements of the Zaidi Shi’a in the north [...]

Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday defended the execution of four men convicted on Saturday of attempting to assassinate President Teodoro Obiang during a 2009 attack on the presidential palace. Jose Abeso Nsue, Manuel Ndong Anseme, Alipio Ndong Asumu and Jacinto Micha Obiang were executed immediately after being convicted by a military court in Malabo. Amnesty International [...]

The US Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it will appeal a preliminary injunction issued earlier this week blocking federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The DOJ will seek to appeal the suspension and also to stay the suspension while the appeal is pending. Last year, President Barack Obama signed an executive order permitting [...]

Capital punishment advocates in Switzerland on Wednesday unexpectedly withdrew from their campaign to reinstate the death penalty only one day after the Federal Chancellery allowed them to begin collecting signatures in support of a referendum . The advocacy group did not give a reason for its sudden withdrawal from the campaign, though it continues to [...]

Lawyers for former Khmer Rouge official Kaing Guek Eav on Tuesday filed a notice of an appeal of his conviction by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) . Last month, the trial chamber of the ECCC convicted Kaing , also known as “Duch,” of crimes against humanity and of violating the 1949 [...]

A gay couple has filed suit in the US District Court for the District of Wyoming challenging the state’s law defining marriage as only existing between a man and a woman. The suit was filed earlier this month by David Shupe-Roderick and Ryan W. Dupree of Cheyenne after they were denied a marriage license from [...]