An Italian judge Wednesday indicted approximately 20 former Parmalat SpA executives, including founder Calisto Tanzi and former CFO Fausto Tonna , for their role in the collapse of the Italian dairy giant. The defendants, who are being charged with fraudulent bankruptcy and criminal association, allegedly concealed the company's debt of 14 billion euros (approximately $19 [...]

Canada's Federal Court Wednesday ordered the government to publicly release previously censored portions of a report on Maher Arar , a Canadian citizen who was detained in the US in 2002 and removed to Syria where he was tortured. Justice Simon Noel, however, said that not all of the report should be disclosed, but that [...]

Carla Del Ponte , the top prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , called on Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro to renew efforts to capture war crimes fugitives Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic in a statement released Wednesday marking the 12th anniversary of the indictment against the two men. [...]

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown told parliament Wednesday in a wide-ranging statement on security and counter-terrorism policy that new rules need to be implemented that allow police more time to question uncharged terror suspects. Brown argued that the current 28-day limit on detention without charge is not adequate in a post-9/11 world, and that the [...]

The UK Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) reported Wednesday that it has found no evidence of direct British involvement in the operation of extraordinary rendition flights through UK airspace and said that the United States' lack of regard for UK concerns in the "war on terror" has had "serious implication for the working of the [...]

The UK Department for Culture, Media, and Sport Tuesday rejected a recommendation to push the EU for longer copyright terms for sound recordings, citing the 2006 Gowers Review of Intellectual Property . The Gowers Review found that "it is not clear that extension of term would benefit musicians and performers very much in practice," and [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday rebuked UK Ambassador to Russia Sir Tony Brenton's suggestion that Russian authorities should interpret the Russian constitution's prohibition on extraditing citizens in "light of the circumstances" , calling it an "insult for our nation and our people" and characterizing the UK's insistence for the extradition of Andrei Lugovoy as "a [...]

A federal judge Tuesday refused to dismiss lawsuits brought by several states seeking more information from the federal government about the administration's domestic surveillance program . In his ruling, Judge Vaughn Walker expressed doubt about the merit of the federal government's arguments that the state-level investigations into the program "are barred by the Supremacy Clause [...]

US District Judge Shira Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York Tuesday certified a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of approximately 5,000 to 10,000 suspected panhandlers against 553 law enforcement agencies in New York state. The lawsuit alleges that the agencies illegally arrested or forced individuals off public property using a state anti-loitering [...]

Torture was the human rights abuse most commonly alleged in Uganda in 2006, according to a report expected to be released in August by the Uganda Human Rights Commission . The annual report, obtained by AP, found that 320 individuals filed formal complaints against the Ugandan government authorities for "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or [...]