Islamic militant group Hezbollah violated international humanitarian law and likely committed war crimes by firing the rockets that have killed at least a dozen Israelis , whether the attacks were targeted at civilians or merely indiscriminate, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday. Most of the rockets were a type that can't be aimed precisely and [...]

Iranian human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani says he has received a five-year prison sentence for disclosing confidential information and engaging in propaganda against the regime, even though neither he nor his lawyers appeared in court or saw the primary evidence against him. Working with Tehran's Defenders of Human Rights Center, which is led by Nobel [...]

AP is reporting that the US House of Representatives has defeated a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage . House leaders scheduled the vote on the Marriage Protection Amendment despite a failed vote on the Senate floor in June. Last month, President Bush urged Congress to approve the amendment . The House vote [...]

BetOnSports PLC and its chief executive are among four corporations and 11 individuals indicted by a federal grand jury in St. Louis on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and fraud for allegedly accepting illegal sports bets online. The indictment, returned on June 1 but only unsealed Monday, also alleges that BetOnSports founder Gary Stephen Kaplan failed [...]

Leading class-action law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman has pleaded not guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges in US District Court in Los Angeles. In a message e-mailed to the media after Monday's arraignment, the firm described its indictment as "unprecedented and unfair" and expressed confidence that it would be "fully vindicated," echoing an [...]

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) has expressed continued concern for the human rights situation in Iraq in its latest bi-monthly report , welcoming the new Iraqi government's "firm commitment to address forcefully urgent human rights concerns" while establishing democracy, but also noting concern over the increasing number of civilian casualties at the [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that President Bush personally put an end to an internal Justice Department investigation into the role DOJ lawyers played in designing the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program . During a Department of Justice oversight hearing , committee chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) asked [...]

Louisiana officials arrested a doctor and two nurses Monday night in connection with patient deaths at the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans just after Hurricane Katrina hit last year. Though prosecutors have not formally charged the three – Dr. Anna Pou, Cheri Landry and Laura Bubo – a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Charles [...]

A Dutch court on Monday rejected a request to ban a political party that wants to lower the age of sexual consent from 16 to 12, saying "the freedom to set up a political party" can be viewed as "the basis for a democratic society." Opponents had asked The Hague District Court to bar the [...]

The US Senate continues debate Tuesday on embryonic stem cell research funding with a vote set for Tuesday afternoon on the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act to provide government funding for stem cell research, despite a definitive statement from the Bush administration that President Bush will veto the bill . The administration referred to the [...]