French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered measures against illegal Roma communities in France and announced new legislation aimed at making their deportation easier. The announcement comes a week after riots by members of the Roma community sparked by the shooting of a young man, resulting in the deployment of 300 troops . The government [...]
The High Court of Sri Lanka on Thursday conducted the first hearing in the case against former army chief Sarath Fonseka , who is accused of provoking violence and bringing disrepute to the government. The charges are in relation to statements made to the Sunday Leader newspaper, which suggested that the government of President Mahinda [...]
Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued an arrest warrant Thursday for three US troops suspected of gunning down Spanish journalist Juse Couso in Iraq. Couso, a television cameraman, was killed in 2003 when a US tank fired into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The 3rd Division infantrymen named in the warrant, Sgt. Shawn Gibson, [...]
A group of suspected Somali pirates pleaded not guilty Wednesday before the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia . The defendants, six Somali men alleged to have been involved in the April attack on the USS Ashland in the Gulf of Aden, pleaded not guilty to charges of piracy and assaulting a [...]
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday signed into law a bill that will grant controversial new powers to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian Federation’s successor to the former USSR’s KGB . The bill, which the Russian parliament approved earlier this month, will give the FSB authority to question citizens about actions that [...]
The Bangladeshi Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned a constitutional amendment that had allowed religious parties to participate in politics. The court, upholding a lower court decision, held that the Fifth Amendment to the Bangladeshi Constitution , which allowed the participation of religious political parties and legitimized military rule, violated the principle of secularism and representative [...]
The US House of Representatives approved a bill Wednesday that would reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses. The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 would amend existing law to reduce the current sentencing ratio from 100:1 to 18:1. Under the existing law passed in 1986, an individual possessing five grams of crack [...]
The UN General Assembly on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring that access to clean and sanitized drinking water is a basic human right . The resolution, passed by a vote of 122-0 with 41 member states abstaining, also requires the UN Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe [...]
The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would create a bipartisan commission charged with reviewing the US criminal justice system. The commission would also propose reforms and promote the reduction and prevention of violence and crime. According to House sponsor Bill Delahunt (D-MA) , the US incarcerates 2.3 million people, with [...]
The UK Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday that two terrorism suspects can sue the government for damages over wrongfully imposed control orders . The appellants, known only as AF and AE due to the sensitive nature of the intelligence related to their cases, have been fighting their control orders, which confine them essentially to house-arrest [...]
