The trial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was paused on Saturday, after lawyers representing victims and their families filed motions to change both the location and judge for the trial. That morning, confidante to Mubarak and his former defense minister, Field Marshal Tantawi testified against Mubarak in a closed-session, but left early and refused [...]
The Collective of Basque Political Prisoners (EPPK) on Friday released a statement supporting the 2010 Guernica agreement and called for the Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) to commit to a permanent truce. The EPPK is comprised of 700 Spanish and French prisoners, of varying levels of leadership in the ETA. The group called for focus on [...]
A soldier with the US Army was sentenced on Friday for his role in murdering an unarmed teenage Afghan civilian. Private Andrew Holmes was sentenced to seven years in prison as part of a plea deal that he agreed to on Thursday. Holmes pleaded guilty to shooting the civilian, but pleaded not guilty to previous [...]
A judge in the US District Court for the District of Idaho issued a temporary order on Friday preventing the state of Idaho from enforcing a law that prohibits a woman from terminating her own pregnancy. Jennie Linn McCormack was charged earlier this year under a 1972 Idaho state law that makes it a felony [...]
US President Barack Obama announced changes to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) on Friday, allowing states to opt-out of the program . The new program gives states flexibility in how they design their curriculum, provides schools relief from the “failing” designation and provides increased flexibility in how education funding is distributed. If states [...]
Amnesty International (AI) called on Haitian authorities Thursday to prosecute former president Jean-Claude Duvalier for crimes against humanity that occurred under his leadership between 1971 and 1986. The pressure on Haiti comes after AI released a report detailing human rights abuses that occurred under Duvalier’s government. When Duvalier returned to Haiti in January 2011, Haitian [...]
The US Court of Federal Claims on Thursday heard arguments regarding a class action lawsuit challenging a government policy that halves severance pay of service members who have been honorably discharged for being gay. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed the lawsuit in November 2010 on behalf of all service members involuntarily discharged in [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) on Friday urged the Syrian government to end their violent crackdown on protesters and permit an independent investigation into the current situation in the country. Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the OHCHR, said “We are extremely alarmed by ongoing reports of the increasingly brutal crackdown [...]
Private Andrew Holmes, 21, pleaded guilty on Thursday to murdering a teenage Afghan civilian that he knew was unarmed. Holmes is the second soldier to plead guilty of five who have been charged with murder as part of a plot contrived with fellow soldiers to kill Afghan civilians which took place between January and May [...]
The US Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) approved a report on Thursday detailing concerns with the controversial Secure Communities Program , a federal enforcement program that partners local law enforcement with federal immigration authorities. A subcommittee of HSAC was formed in June by the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and was asked [...]
