The US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces on Friday upheld the convictions of two soldiers found guilty of offenses committed as guards at Abu Ghraib prison . Army Spc. Sabrina Harman had been convicted of conspiracy, dereliction of duty and maltreatment of prisoners dating back to November 2003. Sgt. Michael Smith , similarly, [...]

US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton on Thursday denounced proposed legislation in the Ugandan parliament that would implement harsh punishments for homosexual behavior, including the death penalty in some circumstances. Obama called the the proposed bill "odious" and said, "we may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that [...]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday charged former Serbian Radical Party (SRS) leader Volislav Seselj with contempt of the court. The charge was prompted by Seselj's inclusion of information that could expose the identities of 13 protected witnesses in three books he wrote. Seselj’s trial just resumed in January, after [...]

John Green : "When Honduran President Porfirio Lobo predictably chose several days ago to pardon the military leaders involved in the June 28, 2009 coup against his predecessor, President Manuel Zelaya, he was staying true to traditional Central American form. Lobo, who supported the coup, was "elected" under conditions that seem to take the region [...]

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. [...]