The Oklahoma Senate on Tuesday voted 32-11 in favor of a bill that would require women seeking an abortion to complete a questionnaire. The bill, known as the Statistical Abortion Report Act, would require women to answer questions such as marital status, reasons for seeking the abortion, and whether the pregnancy is the result of [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio on Monday ruled that the US Treasury Department must show probable cause for freezing the assets of an Ohio-based charity suspected of having ties to the militant Islamic group Hamas . Judge James Carr had previously ruled in August that the federal [...]

The French National Assembly on Tuesday unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Islamic burqa and other full face veils as contrary to gender equality. The resolution passed with 434 votes , with the remaining members of the 577-seat house abstaining. The passage of the resolution lays the groundwork for a complete ban on full face [...]

A Vietnamese appeals court on Tuesday affirmed the sentences facing two democracy activists convicted of subversion. The court upheld the sentence of five years imprisonment and three subsequent years of house arrest for prominent human rights lawyer Le Cong Dinh , as well as the 16-year sentence against Internet entrepreneur Tran Huynh Duy Thuc. The [...]

The Egyptian Parliament on Tuesday voted to extend the country's state of emergency for two years. Despite the two-year extension, parliament voted to limit the application of the emergency laws only to cases of terrorism and drug trafficking. In a speech to parliament, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said: The emergency law will not be [...]

Lawyers for pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi filed a final appeal in Myanmar's Supreme Court on Monday challenging the 18-month extension of her house arrest. The appeal requests that the court forward her case to the Special Appellate Branch, a multi-judge panel that represents Suu Kyi's last means of legal recourse in the matter. [...]

A group of UN human rights experts said Monday that Arizona's new immigration law could violate international standards that are binding on the US. The group of six UN experts, which includes UN Special Rapporteur on human rights of migrants Jorge Bustamante , said the Arizona law might encourage discrimination: A disturbing pattern of legislative [...]

A federal judge on Monday refused to dismiss criminal charges against former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani , despite his lawyers claims that he had been tortured in prison. Judge Lewis Kaplan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) said that even if Ghailani was mistreated while in Central [...]

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed the existence of a secret detention facility at Bagram Air Base , according to a Tuesday BBC News report . The BBC reported last month that nine Afghan witnesses have claimed that they were held and tortured in a secret US prison at Bagram. The [...]

Argentine authorities on Monday arrested former secret service agent Miguel Angel Furci on charges of human rights abuses committed during the nation's 1976-83 "Dirty War" . Furci, a former agent of the Secretariat of State Intelligence (SIDE), was charged with 70 kidnappings and the torture of detainees at a secret Buenos Aires facility known as [...]