Senior US Senate Republicans reached an agreement on military commissions legislation with the White House Thursday that would make the President the sole arbiter of the meaning of the Geneva Conventions for the United States and would bar litigants such as detainees from invoking the Conventions in habeas or civil actions in the federal courts. [...]

US Central Intelligence Agency officers concerned about being prosecuted for illegal interrogation tactics refused to carry out interrogations of terror suspects, contributing to pressure on the Bush administration to empty its secret prisons and transfer top terrorism suspects to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , according to a report in the Financial Times. While US officials have [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said Thursday in Geneva that "the situation as far as torture is concerned in Iraq is now completely out of hand", and is so bad that "many people say that it is worse than in the times of Saddam Hussein." Nowak has not been able to visit Iraq [...]

Amnesty International said Thursday that China has not been working quickly enough to meet its promise to improve human rights in the country in order to host the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Amnesty said China's overall record was poor, and suggested that although progress had been made in some areas, rights protection had deteriorated [...]

Lawyers for the US Department of Justice Thursday asked the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a ruling of Judge Garr King of US District Court in Portland to allow a lawsuit by the US branch of the Saudi Arabia-based Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation to proceed against the US government over the warrantless wiretapping [...]

A group of five United Nations human rights investigators told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva Thursday that pending US legislation drafted by the Bush administration to clarify interrogation methods for terror suspects will breach Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions , which bars "outrages on personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." [...]

A federal judge ruled Thursday that all evidence relevant to the CIA leak case against former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby should be considered for admission, despite government concerns about confidentiality. Attorneys for the government had suggested a three-part test for potential evidence which would allow classified information to be admitted only if its [...]

The retrial of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor accused of infecting over 400 Libyan patients, primarily children , with the HIV virus, was adjourned Thursday after a defense lawyer did not show up in court. In the absence of leading defense lawyer Othmane Bizanti, the trial was postponed until October 31. Bizanti was [...]

The Royal Thai Army which took over the government of Thailand through a coup earlier this week said Thursday that four top leaders of the government of ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra have been detained. The new military rulers also took over the responsibilities of Parliament , prohibiting all meetings by political parties, barring [...]

A federal judge Wednesday ruled that the Pentagon must release additional documents revealing the names of Guantanamo Bay detainees who have either been released or who have alleged abuse by prison guards or other detainees. The order was made pursuant to a lawsuit brought by the Associated Press in March under the Freedom of Information [...]