The US House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct concluded Friday that although Republican leaders did not break any ethics rules in addressing the misconduct of disgraced ex-Congressman Mark Foley , they nonetheless failed to protect young pages from inappropriate communications. Following an investigation , the panel found that House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) most [...]

The number of journalists imprisoned for their writings increased for the second year in a row in 2006 and one-third of those jailed are Internet journalists or bloggers, according to a new worldwide report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) . The CPJ report notes that of the 134 journalists imprisoned around the world [...]

US government lawyers asked a federal judge Friday to dismiss a lawsuit against outgoing US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in connection with alleged torture and abused by US personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, arguing Rumsfeld is entitled to immunity. The ACLU and Human Rights First sued Rumsfeld and other military officials in 2005 on [...]

War crimes defendant Vojislav Seselj agreed to end his nearly month-long hunger strike Friday after an appeals chamber at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled that Seselj could represent himself during trial. Last month, the ICTY stripped Seselj of his right to defend himself after he failed to appear in court, despite [...]

The US District Court for the Western District of Michigan ruled Thursday that the Michigan Department of Corrections in contempt of court for failing to conform with medical care requirements mandated by the court in a prior ruling. The court ordered the department to correct its medication and staff deficiencies on or before February 1, [...]

An internal investigation has found that French police officers improperly handled a case that sparked weeks of rioting outside Paris and around the country late last year, a lawyer involved in the case said Thursday. The mass rioting began in the poor Paris suburbs in October 2005 after two immigrant youths – one from Tunisia [...]

A first group of more than 40 detainees held at the US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay were transferred Thursday to a new $37 million dollar maximum-security prison built by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root designed to minimize detainee contact and protect guards from attack. Military officials at the naval base say that isolating the [...]

The Indonesian Constitutional Court on Friday overturned as unconstitutional a 2004 law establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Indonesia to investigate, compensate, and resolve many human rights violations that occurred during the 1966-1998 authoritarian regime of former President Haji Mohammad Suharto . Three parts of the 46-article law were challenged by a coalition of [...]

The Nigerian Supreme Court has ruled that an attempt to remove regional governor Rasheed Ladoja from his position was unconstitutional. Ladoja, governor of Nigeria's Oyo state, was impeached in January 2006 after being accused of corruption and abusing his office. He challenged the impeachment in court, and the nation's high court on Thursday upheld a [...]

Italian lawmakers are planning to draft legislation that would give some legal recognition to same-sex unions , officials from the Italian Senate said Thursday. Senate leaders have requested that a bill be drafted by January 31 that would give legal status to unions of all unmarried couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, for tax purposes and [...]