The National Organization for Human Rights in Syria announced Friday that the release of jailed Syrian writer and activist Michel Kilo , who was set to be released on bail Thursday, has been delayed due to procedural holdups. Kilo was one of ten activists arrested after signing the so-called Beirut-Damascus Declaration of 12 May , [...]

The government of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) is amending a civil unions law that was overturned by the federal government earlier this year , ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell said Friday. Corbell told an Australian Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry into discrimination against people in same-sex relationships that the amendments – such [...]

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal (OHCHR-Nepal) has urged the Seven Party Alliance Government and the Maoist faction in Nepal to adhere to their commitments to protect human rights, saying in a statement Thursday that although there have been efforts to combat impunity those "measures have been far from [...]

New York's Court of Appeals , the state's highest court, handed down a 6-0 decision Thursday, banning Catholic Charities and nine other social service organizations from refusing to provide birth control insurance coverage for their employees. The decision hinged on whether such organizations would be classified as social services agencies or as churches under the [...]

The US Justice Department has issued a notice informing the US District Court for the District of Columbia that it no longer has jurisdiction over 196 habeas corpus cases brought by detainees at Guantanamo Bay . The DOJ notice came one day after President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 , and followed [...]

The US Department of State's top legal advisor asked Friday that the UK and other foreign governments to help repatriate detainees at Guantanamo Bay rather than calling for closure of the prison. In an interview with the BBC, John Bellinger stated "If we really want to reduce the numbers to send people back, progress cannot [...]

A Turkish veterans association has announced that it will bring lawsuits before the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of 6,317 Turks allegedly killed in the southern province of Gaziantep by French and Armenian troops when France occupied the territory during World War I. Turkish National Power Veterans Association leader Sevret Saltan says that [...]

Australia's justice minister has denounced the five year detention without trial of Australian citizen David Hicks in Australia's boldest official statement in several months concerning the Guantanamo prisoner. In a speech in Perth to the International Criminal Lawyers' Conference, Christopher Ellison said of the Australian government, "We have made it clear that we do not [...]

US President George W. Bush has authorized the first changes to the US space policy in nearly 10 years by asserting authority to deny access to space to any adversary hostile to US interests. An unclassified version of the new US National Space Policy is posted on the website of the Office of Science and [...]

Michael Dewayne Johnson, a death row inmate in Texas, committed suicide Thursday, 15-hours before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection . Johnson was convicted of murdering a gas station attendant in 1995, but maintained that he was only a companion to the shooter. Johnson's companion was released from prison after serving an eight-year [...]