Many UN member states are failing to hold other countries accountable for human rights violations , according to a UN Watch report released Friday. The report, entitled "Mutual Praise Society," focused on meetings of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and tracked reports made by various countries about the status of other UN members. Finding [...]

US State Department spokesperson Robert Wood said Wednesday that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has told Congress that she intends to begin preliminary negotiations with Russia on a new treaty that would significantly lower nuclear stockpiles in both countries. The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) , which limited the US and Russia to [...]

Convening authority of military commissions Susan Crawford announced Thursday that the Pentagon has formally dropped charges against suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahimal al-Nashiri . Crawford's order ends the last active military commission trial, complying with President Barack Obama's executive order mandating a reprieve of the prosecution of all cases at the Guantanamo Bay military [...]

Sudan reissued a request to the UN Security Council Thursday to delay for one year war crimes charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for alleged genocide in Darfur. International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has sought an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and the [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher Rachael Reid responded Friday to media accusations that she received secret information from British officer Lt. Col. Owen McNally, arrested this week on suspicion of leaking secret information regarding civilian casualty figures in Afghanistan. Reid accused the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD) of falsely informing the media that she was [...]

 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that Bush administration immigration enforcement tactics were both overly-aggressive and ineffective, the Cardozo School of Law's Immigration Justice Clinic said Wednesday. The documents show that in 2006 ICE policy increased arrest quotas from 125 to 1000 per year and eliminated a previous [...]

A Turkish court on Thursday sentenced a Kurdish member of the Grand National Assembly , the Turkish parliament, to 18 months in prison on charges of spreading terrorist propaganda. Aysel Tugluk was convicted in connection with a speech she gave in 2006 during which she explained her party's objection to labeling the outlawed Kurdistan Workers [...]

Nominee for director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Leon Panetta testified Thursday before the US Senate Intelligence Committee that he would perform his duties according to the law while upholding the Constitution. Panetta said: I believe the Director should be responsible for shaping the role of CIA in the twenty-first century to protect this [...]

Nominee for Deputy Attorney General David Ogden Thursday defended his representation of parties opposing anti-pornography and pre-abortion parental notification laws during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee . Ogden, who is presently in private practice at the law firm WilmerHale , has come under attack from conservative groups, including Focus on the Family and the [...]

US Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery Thursday in New York for pancreatic cancer . Ginsburg, 75, is expected to remain at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where the surgery was performed, for seven to 10 days before being released. According to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg had no symptoms [...]