The Myanmar military government should investigate allegations that police opened fire on panicked prisoners during last month's devastating cyclone, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar Tomas Ojea Quintana said Friday. In a report to the UN Human Rights Council , Ojea Quintana alleged soldiers and riot police began shooting prisoners [...]

The US should not try children under the age of 18 in military tribunals, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said in a report released Friday as part of a periodic review of compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child . The committee also called on the US to [...]

A panel of three international judges in the ethnically-divided town of Mitrovica sentenced an ethnic Albanian man Friday to 40 years in prison for a 2001 bus bombing that killed 11 Serbs on a religious trip. Florim Ejupi was indicted in 2005 on charges related to the bus bombing and the killings of two police [...]

A federal grand jury has indicted two former executives of Silicon Valley technology firm Broadcom in connection with a scheme to backdate company stock options. According to the indictment unsealed in federal court Thursday, firm co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III and former CEO William J. Ruehle engaged in a "conspiracy to disguise, conceal, understate, and [...]

A UK High Court judge has ordered an expedited hearing on whether the UK government must turn over documents allegedly showing that the last British resident detained at Guantanamo Bay was tortured. US military prosecutors last week charged Ethiopian London resident Binyam Mohamed with conspiring to commit terrorism. Mohamed was originally arrested in Pakistan and [...]

A spokesman for the Japanese cabinet said Friday that the government would officially recognize the Ainu – an ethnic minority mainly concentrated on Japan's Hokkaido island who traditionally lived by hunting, gathering and fishing – as an indigenous population after both houses of the country's parliament unanimously endorsed a non-binding resolution urging the move. The [...]

The Department of Homeland Security's internal investigations department has reopened an investigation into the extraordinary rendition of Canadian engineer Maher Arar , DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner told a congressional subcommittee Thursday. Skinner said that new information contradicts an earlier conclusion clearing US agencies of wrongdoing in the extradition. Arar was detained in the US [...]

Japan's Ministry of Justice indicated Thursday that it would revise a law which denied Japanese citizenship to the illegitimate children of Japanese fathers and foreign mothers. The Supreme Court of Japan ruled Wednesday that Article 3 of the Nationality Law violated equal protection guarantees in Article 14 of the Japanese Constitution . Japanese Justice Minister [...]

The US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released two new reports Friday detailing increased populations in American jails and prisons . The reports show that the US prison population increased by 1.5 percent from mid-year 2006 to mid-year 2007, compared with 2 percent growth in the previous reporting period. Approximately 2.3 million [...]

The US Department of Justice filed a complaint Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against Honeywell International Inc. , alleging that the company knowingly sold more than 1,700 defective bulletproof vests to US law enforcement and military agencies during a five-year period. The DOJ also accused Honeywell of hiding knowledge [...]