French state rail network SNCF announced Friday that since June 2006 it has received about 1200 claims related to its role in helping the Nazis to transport people, mostly Jews, to concentration and death camps during Germany's occupation of France in World War II. The complaints follow a successful case brought against SNCF by European [...]

Switzerland's top Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner Hanspeter Thür said Friday that Swiss banks violated national secrecy laws when they failed to inform customers using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) international banking cooperative service that their personal data could be disclosed to third parties, including the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [...]

Members of the Australian Lawyers Alliance have voted unanimously to condemn the Australian government's handling of the case of Australian national David Hicks , held by American authorities at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in Afghanistan in 2001. Hicks stands accused of fighting against the United States and its allies as an "enemy combatant", but [...]

The European Union (EU) Friday condemned passage of a French bill making it a crime punishable by imprisonment to deny that the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey during World War I was genocide. The bill passed France’s lower house on Thursday but still needs approval by the French Senate and President Jacques Chirac to [...]

A Russian court has shut down the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (ORCD) , a Chechen human rights group that has been exposing abuses against civilians in Chechnya and providing assistance to victims of violence. The decision follows the February conviction of group co-founder Stanislav Dmitriyevsky , who was charged with “inciting racial hatred.” Dmitriyevsky was convicted [...]

President George W. Bush signed two bills into law Friday separately imposing sanctions on North Korea and Sudan in light of the former's nuclear test earlier this week and reports of continued atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region . The North Korea Nonproliferation Act of 2006 is designed to restrict the transfer of weapons of mass [...]

A judge in Florida refused Friday to block the sale of the controversial video game Bully , ruling that it does not qualify as a "public nuisance" under state law. The suit, brought by long-time video games foe Jack Thompson , named Wal-Mart andGamestop, two video game retailers, and Take-Two Interactive, parent company of publisher [...]

Peruvian rebel leader Abimael Guzman was found guilty of aggravated terrorism Friday and sentenced to life in prison by a Peruvian civil tribunal in Callao. Guzman founded the Shining Path guerilla movement in 1980 and was blamed for tens of thousands of deaths over the group's twelve years of activity. Guzman's lover and second-in-command Elena [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed suit against the city of Philadelphia Friday for violating the rights of its Spanish-speaking voters in breach of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and said that the city had violated Section 203 [...]

A Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury issued a $78.47 million verdict against retailer Wal-Mart Friday, awarding damages to plaintiffs on behalf of current and former Pennsylvania employees for work during rest breaks and off-the-clock labor. Wal-Mart prevailed on a third count which alleged that the company had denied meal breaks to the plaintiffs. Wal-Mart [...]