The Jamaican parliament on Tuesday voted 34-15 , with 10 abstentions, to resume the use of the death penalty. Advocates for the measure cited the country's extremely high murder rate as justification for resuming executions. Opponents of the practice, including Jamaicans for Justice executive director Carolyn Gomes, have argued that the country should increase efforts [...]

A Florida trial court judge on Tuesday ruled that a Florida statute preventing same-sex couples from adopting children is unconstitutional, allowing a Florida petitioner and his partner to adopt two children previously in his foster care. Judge Cindy Lederman of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida found that the 1977 statute violated the equal protection [...]

The Moscow City Court on Tuesday affirmed a lower court's decision not to legally rehabilitate captured Polish officers executed in 1940 during the Katyn massacre , in which more than 20,000 Polish Army reservists, academics and politicians were killed in the Katyn Forest in present-day Belarus, as well as other locations. Lawyers for the victims [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned of possible war crimes being committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a new report released Tuesday. The rights group claims that since disputed 2006 elections , approximately 500 people have been killed by Congolese security forces, and about 1,000 more have been detained and possibly tortured. The 96-page [...]

Craig McClure : "The International AIDS Society strongly urges the government of Papua, Indonesia to discard its proposed plans to insert microchips into "sexually aggressive" HIV-positive people in the province. Passing such a law into practice would be an infringement of basic human rights, and will in fact increase the rate of new infections within [...]

The US Supreme Court granted certiorari in two cases Tuesday. In United States v. Denedo , the Court will decide whether a military appellate court has jurisdiction to entertain a petition for a writ of error coram nobis filed by a former service member to review a final court-martial conviction. The case involves a Nigerian [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Monday affirmed a lower court decision denying in part defendant's motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit alleging that officials of the Roman Catholic Church failed to warn the public of sexual abuse of children by priests. The plaintiffs, who claim to be victims of [...]

Former Osama Bin Laden driver Salim Ahmed Hamdan will soon be transferred from US to Yemeni custody, according to US military sources quoted in media reports Monday. His transfer comes approximately one month before the end of a six-month jail term he received for providing material support for terrorism . Commentators suggest that the transfer [...]

Russia's Prosecutor General's Office on Tuesday announced the indictment of exiled business tycoon Boris Berezovsky for fraud and money laundering. The charges, filed under the Russian Criminal Code , stem from a deal arranged between Russian car manufacturers AvtoVAZ and LogoVAZ that left 5560 cars unpaid for and resulted in the unauthorized use of approximately [...]

Singapore's High Court on Tuesday found the Wall Street Journal Asia in contempt of court over the newspaper's publication of three articles that allegedly undermined the country's judiciary. High Court Justice Tay Yong Kwang ruled that two editorials, "Democracy in Singapore" and "Judging Singapore's Judiciary" , as well as a letter to the editor from [...]