Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa dissolved Parliament on Tuesday and called for early parliamentary elections. The country's parliamentary elections could now be conducted as early as April 8, with the new parliament convening as early as April 22. It is believed that Rajapaksa is trying to harness momentum from the presidential election in January, in [...]

Billy Corriher : "Attorney General Eric Holder is standing firm on the decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the attempted Christmas Day bomber, in a criminal trial. Some senators critical of the decision not to use military tribunals have gone so far as to introduce legislation to block funding for civilian trials for terrorism suspects. [...]

The government of Bahrain has reverted to using torture to gain confessions from detainees after a decade of reform banning such practices, according to a report released Monday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) . HRW conducted interviews with 20 former detainees who claimed that they had suffered torture and ill-treatment as early as 2007. The [...]

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that the country's five-year-old social welfare benefit law is unconstitutional. The benefit, known as Hartz IV, merges unemployment and social assistance programs and is only granted where individuals do not have sufficient means, income, or property of their own. Under the current structure, the standard benefit for single adults [...]

The African Union (AU) on Monday called for a hybrid court of Sudanese and foreign judges to hear trials of individuals accused of war crimes in Darfur . The AU Implementation Panel, led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki , renewed its request for the combined court a week after the International Criminal Court [...]

Former Boeing engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison, following his July 2009 conviction under the 1996 Economic Espionage Act . Chung, a native of China, was convicted by the US District Court for the Central District of California in a non-jury trial of stealing corporate trade secrets related to [...]

A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced human rights activist Tan Zuoren to five years in prison on subversion charges. Amnesty International (AI) says that Zuoren sought to release an independent report documenting the lethal consequences of substandard construction in the Sichuan province's 2008 earthquake , which left some 90,000 dead. Although Zuoren was charged with [...]

The European Union (EU) and the US government on Monday issued a joint statement condemning Iranian human rights violations since the disputed June presidential election . According to the statement, the Iranian government must respect international human rights principles, especially during the coming anniversary of the founding of the 1979 Islamic Republic this week. The [...]

Former UK Foreign Ministry secretary Jack Straw testified to the Iraq Inquiry on Monday that he did not ignore legal advice that the 2003 Iraq invasion lacked basis in international law. During Straw's second appearance before the public inquiry, he explained that he noted but did not accept the advice of former chief legal adviser [...]

Sri Lankan military police on Monday arrested defeated opposition presidential candidate and former general Sarath Fonseka . The Sri Lankan Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) announced that Fonseka was arrested "in connection with certain fraudulent acts and other military offences." Fonseka, who orchestrated the successful military campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam [...]