New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) has signed into law a groundbreaking bill designed to promote drug overdose reporting by granting limited immunity from drug possession charges for those drug users, family members and acquaintances who make the 911 call. The measure is the first such legislation to be adopted by any US state. Richardson, [...]

A panel of Japanese experts will begin reviewing the Japanese constitution later this month to determine whether Japan needs to revise Article 9 , which has been interpreted to bar Japan from maintaining military forces and from using force in international conflicts except in self-defense, Kyodo News Service reported Friday. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and [...]

Cambodian judges on the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) fired back at their international counterparts on Friday with a statement accusing the international judges of deliberately delaying the trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders by threatening to postpone the April 30 meeting to draft the ECCC's internal rules. The international judges on [...]

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has pardoned former President Pasteur Bizimungu , freeing him Friday from a 15-year prison sentence handed down in 2004 for inciting violence, embezzlement, organizing a militia, and associating with criminals. Bizimungu's release comes nearly a year after Bizimungu sent Kagame a letter in May 2006 asking for clemency , saying that [...]

The North Carolina Senate passed a joint resolution Thursday apologizing for the state government's role in the practice of slavery, detailing various legal steps in the 17th through the 20th centuries which had suppressed the freedom of black people in the state and expressing "its profound contrition for the official acts that sanctioned and perpetuated [...]

China's State Council on Friday banned the sale of human organs used for transplants effective May 1. The new regulation prohibits individuals and organizations from trading organs, such as hearts, lungs, and kidneys, following allegations of involuntary donations and international criticism that human organs taken from executed prisoners were sold to foreigners. The regulation only [...]

Steve Komadina : "I think the bill was good in that it mandated the Health Dept. to develop educational material to send home to parents informing them about the vaccine and the virus. Parents could then make an informed decision as to whether they wanted their child to be vaccinated or not. The only true [...]

Canada, Sweden and Eritrea are pressuring Ethiopia to reveal details regarding the foreign nationals it has allegedly detained in secret prisons in collaboration with the FBI and CIA . The existence of prisons in which US government agencies have interrogated individuals suspected of having ties to al Qaeda was disclosed on Tuesday after Human Rights [...]

The Serbian Supreme Court has upheld the sentence of Anton Lekaj , the first ethnic Albanian to be convicted by a Serb court of war crimes in the Kosovo region. A member of the Kosovo Liberation Army , Lekaj's trial began before a special war crimes tribunal in Serbia in 2005 . In September, the [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour released two reports Friday detailing alleged rapes and disappearances carried out by militia soldiers in the Darfur region of Sudan at the end of 2006. According to the first report released by Arbour, at least 15 rapes and sexual assaults were committed by men who appeared to [...]