A Vietnamese court on Friday sentenced pro-democracy writer and rights activist Tran Khai Thanh Thuy to three-and-a-half years in prison on assault charges. Thuy and her husband, who received two years' house arrest, were convicted in a one-day trial of assaulting two men during an argument about the parking of their motorbike. Thuy maintains that [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a statement of interest Thursday urging the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to reject the amended class action settlement in a copyright suit over Google's book-scanning initiative . In its statement, which notes “substantial progress” toward resolving issues raised in September, the DOJ [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Thursday that it is unclear whether Israel and Palestine have fully met UN demands to set up a commission to investigate war crimes that may occurred during the Gaza conflict . The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in November giving Israel and Palestine three months to complete an investigation [...]

The African Commission on Human and People's Rights ruled Thursday that the government of Kenya violated the rights of the Endorois people when it forcibly evicted them from their land. The Endorois are a group of about 60,000 people who were removed from their land around Lake Bogoria in 1973 when the Kenyan government began [...]

Haitian authorities charged ten US citizens Thursday with kidnapping 33 children. The Americans, many of whom were from the Idaho-based New Life Children's Refuge , were arrested last week for attempting to take the children across the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic where the group claimed it hoped to start an orphanage. Haitian authorities [...]

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Wednesday that the Harper administration will not seek the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr . Cannon said that while the government is considering options to remedy the violation of Khadr's constitutional rights, it will not press for his return because he faces charges in the US. [...]

Prosecutors from the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois issued a superseding indictment against former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich Thursday. The new indictment, which does not allege additional wrongdoing but contains eight new charges related to racketeering, extortion, and bribery, allows prosecutors to try Blagojevich without relying on the federal honest services [...]

The New York Office of the Attorney General on Wednesday filed civil charges against Bank of America (BOA) , former CEO Ken Lewis, and former CFO Joseph Price, alleging that the bank misled investors in order to acquire financial firm Merrill Lynch . The complaint alleges that Merrill Lynch had significant losses in the months [...]

Angela C. Wu : "The French Parliament has issued a report recommending a ban on the burqa in government-run venues such as public transportation and hospitals. The 200 page report, published on January 26th by a special committee of parliamentarians, was commissioned to study the role of the veil in France and came just shy [...]

A Spanish Supreme Court judge ruled on Thursday that National Court judge Baltasar Garzon may have exceeded his jurisdictional authority when he launched an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed under Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War . In October 2008, Garzon ordered the exhumation of 19 mass graves in Spain, and ordered government [...]