The New York State Assembly Tuesday passed a bill to legalize same-sex marriage following three hours of often emotional debate. The bill was proposed in April by New York Governor Eliot Spitzer , and was sponsored in the Assembly by gay Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell , brother of talk show host Rosie O'Donnell. Assemblymember O'Donnell, who [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC) brought a federal class action lawsuit against the US Tuesday on behalf of two immigrants who said they were forcibly drugged with sedatives during deportation proceedings. The ACLU/SC began an investigation into the alleged incidents soon after the allegations were made. In one incident from December [...]

US President George W. Bush Wednesday followed through on his promised veto of a Democrat-backed bill that would have relaxed funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research . The Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, sent by Congress to the White House earlier this month , would have allowed federal funding for research using [...]

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso urged EU member states to compromise to resolve key differences in negotiations over the proposed constitutional treaty during a press conference Tuesday, reiterating that the EU must continue to demonstrate pragmatism, flexibility, and unity to iron out its differences. He also asked state leaders to refrain from using the [...]

The US House of Representatives Wednesday overwhelmingly passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act by 422-2 . The bill would establish an Unsolved Crimes Section within the civil rights divisions of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation , funded by an allocation of $10 million per year over the [...]

The Libyan Supreme Court announced Wednesday it will rule on the appeal of six foreign medics in three weeks. The five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor were convicted last year of knowingly infecting over 400 Libyan patients with the HIV virus. Analysts say that the court, which heard the medics' appeal this week, is [...]

The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on Wednesday convicted three former leaders of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council of crimes against humanity including collective punishments, murder, rape, conscripting or enlisting child soldiers, enslavement, and pillage. The verdict, the first judgments to be handed down by the SCSL, also represents the first conviction on the [...]

Serge Brammertz , the deputy prosecutor for investigations at the International Criminal Court, resigned on June 14, according to a Tuesday announcement from the International Criminal Court . Brammertz will continue to head the UN International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC), which is currently investigating the February 2005 Rafik Hariri assassination and the more recent bombing [...]

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Tuesday that Poland plans to appeal a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that found Poland in violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights for prohibiting a pregnant woman who had a serious risk of vision loss if she carried the pregnancy [...]

Members of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence expressed reservations Tuesday about the nomination of John Rizzo as CIA general counsel, questioning the career CIA-lawyer's decision to sign off on the controversial 2002 "Bybee Memo" in which the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) defined torture as physical pain equivalent in "in [...]