Kuwaiti prosecutors announced Wednesday that they will shortly be handing over to the Iraqi Special Tribunal a list of crimes committed by Saddam Hussein, whose forces invaded and occupied the country in 1990-1, precipitating the Gulf War. Kuwaiti news agency KUNA says the already-prepared list has been sent to Kuwait's prime minister for final review [...]

Hate crimes and civil rights violations against Muslims in the United States have reached their highest point since right after September 11, according to a report released Wednesday by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) . As reasons for the recent surge the report cites increasing political rhetoric used against Muslim figures and lingering hatred [...]

The International Labor Organization said Wednesday that some 12.3 million people worldwide are enslaved. The figure was publicized in a new ILO study of forced labor and modern slavery across the globe. The study says 2.4 million people, mostly women and children, have been forced into trafficking, generating a profit of over $30B. This practice [...]

Senators and others critical of the sweeping powers granted to law enforcement autorities under the USA Patriot Act testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of a proposed SAFE Act to limit those powers, in particular by requiring government officials to inform suspects of secret searches of their homes or businesses within seven [...]

British Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer Wednesday proposed a plan to cut the length of criminal trials and reduce the costs of legal aid , which have risen by a third since the Labor Party took power in 1997. Under Falconer's proposal, lawyers will have to bid for contracts to take legal aid cases and then [...]

Riots erupted across Afghanistan Wednesday in response to a recent report by Newsweek magazine that in an effort to infuriate Muslim prisoners US troops at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran by placing copies on toilets and in one case had even flushed a copy down a latrine. Insulting the Koran is blasphemy to Muslime [...]

A federal judge Tuesday threatened to take over the California prison health care system , citing "terrible" medical care that prisoners receive. Judge Thelton E. Henderson cited complaints about bad doctors, wretched facilities, and irresponsible management of HIV patients, all of which are said to have led to inmate deaths. The prison system has acknowledged [...]

A US bankruptcy judge ruled Tuesday that United Airlines may sever its employees' pension plans, precipitating the largest corporate-pension default in US history. The ruling by Judge Eugene Wedoff means that United employees will now receive their pensions through Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) which initially opposed the plan, but later agreed to receive $1.5B [...]

New York-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch issued a report Wednesday criticizing the US and other governments in the West and Middle East for sending Islamist detainees to Egypt, a country infamous for torture . The report, entitled Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to Egypt , tracked 61 individuals turned over to Egyptian [...]

Egypt's lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the Egyptian Constitution Tuesday setting regulations for multi-candidate presidential elections . The upper house had passed the regulations Sunday, which require candidates to be a member of a political party or receive a minimum of 65 recommendations from elected members of the lower house, 25 [...]