The European Union (EU) announced Friday that it has entered into an agreement with Kenya to transfer suspected pirates captured by EU counter-pirate operations into Kenyan custody for prosecution. The agreement contains provisions for the nine Somali pirates captured by German forces on Tuesday, and "defines modalities" for any capture of suspected pirates in the [...]

J. Peter Pham : "The decision of Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) this week to issue a warrant of arrest for Sudan's President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including intentionally directing attacks on civilian populations in Darfur and pillaging towns and villages in the [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston on Friday called for an independent investigation into the Thursday killings of Kenyan human rights activists Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu. The two men were officers for the Oscar Foundation , a group critical of the Kenyan government for its use of [...]

A panel of legal and medical experts headed by Spanish Minister of Equality Bibiano Aido on Wednesday proposed sweeping reforms to Spain's current abortion laws. The panel contends that women should have the right to choose to abort during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. Where the fetus is malformed or where the mother faces [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Friday that his office may investigate whether Sudan's expulsion of foreign aid agencies is a possible breach of human rights law or war crime. Colville said that such an investigation had not yet begun, but strongly criticized  Sudan for ordering the groups to leave. Also Friday, UN [...]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday held a hearing to reconsider California's request to regulate automobile greenhouse gases . Chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board Mary Nichols was joined by environmental groups and other state officials at the hearing to encourage the EPA to reverse its prior decision denying California's request. Thirteen states [...]

 The Sri Lankan government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) should agree on an evacuation plan for civilians caught in hostilities between the groups in the country's Vanni region, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW) Wednesday. HRW said that approximately 150,000 civilians are caught in the area, and that more than 2,000 have been killed in the [...]

The California Supreme Court on Thursday heard oral arguments in three cases challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8 , the ballot measure passed in November that banned same-sex marriage in the state. Equality California challenged the validity of the proposition, arguing that it went against the state's constitution , by stripping an entire class of people [...]

A federal judge at the US District Court for the District of New Jersey on Thursday upheld the guilty verdicts reached by a jury against five men convicted of plotting to kill US soldiers at Fort Dix . The five men, Serdar Tatar, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, and Shain Duka, were acquitted [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday that Russia is liable for the death of an ethnic Chechen at the hands of Russian forces in 2000, finding Russia in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights . The judgment orders the Russian government to pay damages of nearly €37,000 to the victim's [...]