The head of the Council of Europe on Monday advocated for free and fair parliamentary elections in Ukraine as he condemned the imprisonment of former prime minister and opposition party leader Yulia Tymoshenko . Council Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland had visited Ukraine to give a speech on the implementation of the Council’s three-year €22 million action [...]
Oil workers in Kazakhstan face mistreatment and repression at the hands of the government and oil companies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Monday. According to HRW, Kazakh authorities and three companies operating in the oil and gas sector in western Kazakhstan restrict workers’ rights to freedom of assembly, association and [...]
The trial for Saif al-Islam , one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons, will be postponed for five months so the prosecution can obtain evidence from Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi , government officials announced on Sunday. Al-Senussi was extradited to Libya from Mauritania last Wednesday on charges of murder and persecution for planning attacks on [...]
Former Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi was sentenced to death after being convicted on three counts of murder on Sunday. The verdict was given in absentia because al-Hashemi has been in hiding since the arrest warrant was issued . Al-Hashemi, who is currently in Turkey to avoid trial in Iraq, denied accusations of him being [...]
The states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont filed an amicus brief along with several other groups in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Friday in support of the lower court ruling that found the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional . Friends of the court included a group of family [...]
Bahrain on Saturday announced that it would pursue legal proceedings against the al Wefaq political party, which it labels an opposition group, for engaging in anti-government protests in the face of a ban of those activities. Bahrain officials claim that al Welfaq organized anti-government protests on Friday that resulted in the arrest of six dissidents. [...]
The Justice M.B. Shah Commission of Inquiry , an Indian judicial committee investigating illegal mining practices, issued a report Friday that indicted Digambar Kamat, the former Chief Minister of the state of Goa , for permitting illegal mining in the state during his 12 year tenure as the state’s minister of mining. The report detailed [...]
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) issued a statement on Friday calling for increased aid for the 2.5 million Syrians affected by the ongoing civil uprising against President Bashar al-Assad . The aid request for the Syria Humanitarian Response Plan was raised from US$180 million to US$347 million after the number [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Friday ruled that disabled employees are to be appointed within their company to vacant positions that they are qualified to hold. The case was brought in 2009 by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against United Airlines, now United Continental Holdings (UAL) . The ruling [...]
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday signed into law a bill that amends the state’s penal code to prohibit the access and viewing of child pornography on the Internet. The bill was passed in response to the state Court of Appeals decision in People v. Kent , which held that under existing New York [...]
