A federal district judge issued an order Wednesday giving the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) until the end of June to finalize a proposed rule removing the American bald eagle from the federal endangered species list . US District Judge John R. Tunheim of the District of Minnesota originally set a deadline of Feb. [...]

Comments by the commander of Guantanamo Bay that Australian detainee David Hicks continues to be a dangerous terrorist were cited by one of Hicks' lawyers Thursday as an example of why Hicks will not receive a fair trial. Rear Admiral Harry Harris , commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo Bay and head of the Guantanamo Bay [...]

Legitimate asylum seekers in the US may be ignored or detained for months or even years given the current expedited removal practices of domestic security officials, according to a report card released Thursday by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF) , a bipartisan commission established by Congress in 1998. The report finds fault [...]

Amnesty International accused Mexico in a report released Wednesday of having a "gravely flawed" criminal justice system in which human rights abuses are perpetuated and criminals are rarely punished. The report cites evidence of arbitrary detentions, torture, fabrication of evidence and unfair trials and claims that the victims are often indigenous Mexicans, the poor, women [...]

Two state legislators asked the attorney general of Texas Wednesday to issue an opinion on the legality of Gov. Rick Perry's executive order mandating that sixth-grade girls be vaccinated for the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV) . The lawmakers also requested that Attorney General Greg Abbott advise the legislature on actions it can take to [...]

Nashville is set to conduct all official business in the English language after the Nashville City Council voted 23-14 Tuesday to amend the City Charter to declare English the official language of the city government. Mayor Bill Purcell is consulting with city attorneys to determine whether to sign, veto, or take no action on the [...]

No formal peace treaty will be concluded between Japan and Russia until Russia relinquishes control of several Japanese islands it has occupied since the end of World War II, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told a rally on Wednesday. Possession of the island chain, known as the Kurils Islands in Russia and the Northern Territories [...]

White House spokesman Tony Snow Wednesday called for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to act on the case of Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, a Shiite lawmaker who US military intelligence says was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in 1984 for his role in a series of car bombings at the US [...]

Fifty-seven countries have signed an international treaty in Paris banning governments from holding suspects in secret detention. The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance was approved by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in June and adopted by consensus by the UN General Assembly in December, but it has not [...]

The military judge overseeing the court-martial of US Army 1st Lt. Ehren Watada declared a mistrial Wednesday after throwing out a pretrial agreement in which Watada admitted that he failed to deploy to Iraq with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in June. Watada was initially charged with missing troop movement, contempt toward officials, and [...]