US President Barack Obama is in violation of international law for declining to prosecute Bush-era CIA agents who allegedly used torture , UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak said in an interview published Friday in Austrian newspaper Der Standard . Nowak said the US is bound by the UN Convention Against Torture , which [...]

The government of Serbia on Friday submitted its arguments against the legality of Kosovo's unilaterally declared independence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) . Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremic said the government, in the almost 1,000 pages it submitted in the case , argues that the claim of independence violated UN Security [...]

The Somali parliament voted Saturday to adopt Islamic Sharia law . A parliamentary spokesperson said that more than 300 Somali MPs voted for the implementation of Sharia law as part of an attempt by Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to bring stability to the failed state. Last month, Ahmed announced that he would support the [...]

The Revolutionary Court of Iran convicted US journalist Roxana Saberi of espionage earlier, sentencing her to eight years in prison, according to her lawyer Saturday. The trial, in which Saberi was accused of passing classified information to US intelligence agencies, was conducted earlier this week in proceedings closed to the public , and news of [...]

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit vacated Friday the Bush-era program for leasing of land for oil and gas drilling on the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) along the Alaskan coast. The court held that the Department of Interior (DOI) had not carried out an environmental sensitivity [...]

The National Institute of Health (NIH) issued proposed guidelines for funding human embryonic stem cell research Friday, which limits funding to embryos that were created to be used in fertility clinics but were no longer needed and would have been discarded. Additionally, the donor must have consented to giving the embryos for research purposes. The [...]

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Friday a proposed finding that atmospheric greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, setting the stage for government regulation of the harmful gases for the first time. Announcement of the proposed finding, which was submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for final review last month, [...]

A jury for a UK crown court convicted Arunachalam Chrishanthakumar Friday of supplying bomb-making materials to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) a Sri Lankan separatist group. Chrishanthakumar was also convicted of receiving documents for the purpose of terrorism, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on charges of receiving military equipment, receiving [...]

The lawyer for the accused gunman on trial in India for the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks moved Friday to suppress his client's confession, arguing it was the product of torture. The lawyer also argued that the trial of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab should be moved to juvenile court because Kasab was 17 at the time [...]

The ability of councils in the UK to monitor citizens for minor infractions will be curtailed , according to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on Friday. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) , passed in 2000, gives broad powers of surveillance to councils, with reasonable suspicion, to watch with closed-circuit television and read the e-mails [...]