A Chinese Intermediate People's Court in Chongqing on Wednesday sentenced former deputy police chief and high-ranking judicial official Wen Qiang to death. Wen was convicted of accepting bribes, protecting criminal gangs, rape, and being unable to justify his large amount of personal assets. The court's verdict stated that from 1996 to 2009 Wen accepted 12 [...]
J. Michael Ritty : "Any sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric is a terrible crime both in canon law and in secular law. At the same time, the presence of a charge of sexually abusing a minor does not mean that an accused cleric loses the right to due process or the right [...]
The Cabinet of India has approved the Prevention of Torture Bill in an effort to move closer to international human rights standards. The bill, which experienced long delays before being passed last week, will now be introduced to the Indian Parliament . Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh strongly supports the bill in order to move [...]
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum announced Tuesday that Georgia will join 18 other states in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the recently enacted health care bill . The lawsuit was originally filed last month in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida . McCollum issued a statement welcoming Georgia to the [...]
The Nebraska Legislature voted 44-5 on Tuesday to approve the Abortion Pain Prevention Act prohibiting an abortion at or past 20 weeks. The law is based on medical evidence that allegedly indicates a fetus can feel pain following that point and goes beyond the previous state law that prohibited abortions at approximately 24 weeks based [...]
Zimbabwe's government on Wednesday declared void a law mandating that indigenous people have majority ownership in all businesses valued at over $500,000. The law took effect last month, but the country's stock market has since fallen 10 percent , causing concern that the law would drive away potential investors. The majority of firms within Zimbabwe [...]
Interim Kyrgyz leader Roza Otunbayeva said Wednesday that ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev should stand trial for the violent protests that erupted in Kyrgyzstan last week. The protests, prompted in part by a drastic increase in utility costs, led to at least 84 deaths and many more injuries. It is not yet clear whether the interim [...]
A judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on Tuesday ordered a southern Mississippi school district to end its practice of allowing students to transfer from their assigned schools and classroom groupings, resulting in a segregated school system. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) initially brought a lawsuit to enforce [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday resumed the war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic . The proceedings commenced with the prosecution calling its first witness, Bosnian Muslim Ahmet Zulic . Zulic provided testimony concerning the 1992 attack on his village of Sanski Most at the beginning [...]
International rights organizations voiced concern Tuesday about a draft media law the Fijian government is slated to approve in the near future. The Media Industry Development Decree 2010 includes several provisions that could result in the imprisonment of journalists for up to five years and stiff fines. Pacific Researcher for Amnesty International (AI) Apolosi Bose [...]
