The Lahore High Court in Pakistan released 12 men Friday with ties to a highly publicized gang-rape, including six men who were convicted of rape and 6 members of the village council. The case centers around Mukhtar Mai who was gang-raped in 2002, allegedly on the orders of a traditional village council after her younger [...]

Illinois pharmacist Luke Vander Bleek has filed suit to oppose a state order that the emergency contraceptive "morning-after pill" be made available immediately. Vander Bleek, a Roman Catholic who owns two pharmacies, claims that the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act that allows health care providers to opt out of procedures they object to [...]

The US Federal Trade Commission voted 4-0 Friday to settle an anti-competitive practices complaint against Chevron , allowing it to to acquire the Unocol energy company for $18 billion. The FTC complaint centered on the rights of Unocal to a patent for reformulated gasoline that could have increased gasoline prices by 6 cents a gallon [...]

An Italian referendum scheduled for June 12-13 on whether to ease the country's restrictive laws concerning fertility treatment and stem cell research and to redefine the legal language that defines the beginning of life at conception seems likely to fail if the latest polls are correct. With the Catholic Church and conservative politicians urging people [...]

Uganda's Court of Appeals Friday dismissed an appeal by death row inmates to ban capital punishment in the country but did find that laws mandating the death penalty for certain crimes are unconstitutional and require Parliamentary amendment. In a unanimous decision, Justice Galdino Okello said the general death penalty was constitutional because it was "punishment [...]

Rwandan officials announced Friday they will not pursue criminal charges against fugitive Hutu rebels that were aged 14 or younger at the time of Rwanda's 1994 genocide . Children as young as 10 years old took part in the slaughter of about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus . About 10,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels of all [...]

Bosnian Serb President Dragan Cavic Friday denounced the brutal killing of six Bosnian Muslim youths by Serb paramilitaries recorded on video in Srebrenica in 1995 and shown on Serbian television after being introduced in evidence last week at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic at The Hague. Cavic condemned the act saying, "Whoever committed [...]

A panel of three federal judges Thursday reaffirmed an earlier decision to reject a legal challenge to the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting plan , concluding the plan was consistent with federal law and the Constitution. In 2004, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas declared the plan constitutional and the decision was [...]

A father and son who were arrested in Lodi, California on charges of lying to the FBI about attending an al-Qaida terrorist training camp, are challenging the government for releasing 2 significantly different affidavits to the media and to the court. The details in the first affidavit sent to the news media mentioned potential terrorist [...]

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Friday denounced the deportation of four Uzbek men from Kyrgyzstan and appealed to the Kyrgyz government to cease further deportation of asylum seekers until procedures determine if they are refugees according to the UN Refugee Convention of 1951 . The four men have been determined "criminals" by the Uzbek government [...]