Angela Wu : "The Supreme Court recently overturned Board of Immigration Appeals and Fifth Circuit rulings in Negusie v. Holder and found that victims of persecution who are forced to participate in persecution may be entitled to asylum. Petitioner Daniel Girmai Negusie is an Eritrean-Ethiopian Christian who was forcibly conscripted into Eritrea's war against Ethiopia [...]
Jesse Reynolds : "President Obama's recent removal of his predecessor's stem cell policy is a welcome development. The Bush administration's restriction on the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research was outdated and increasingly unpopular. While much of the media coverage of President Obama's announcement has focused on the research's potential and the political [...]
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and his Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Saturday were considering offering a compromise deal to opposition factions – including members of the lawyers' movement – currently engaged in crippling anti-government protests and a "long march" on Islamabad, according to local media reports. Under the terms of the deal, the government would [...]
The Chinese government released two democracy activists Thursday after serving eight years of their ten-year prison sentences, according to US-based Human Rights in China (HRIC) . The two activists, Yang Zili and Zhang Yonghai, were sentenced to prison along with two other activists in 2003 for "subversion of state power" and "attempting to overthrow the [...]
The Sri Lankan government Saturday denied allegations by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay that recent Sri Lankan military action against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) has caused some 2,800 civilian deaths and may constitute war crimes. Pillay on Friday cited "credible sources" for the stated number of civilian deaths [...]
The government of Switzerland said Friday it will follow standards set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) , adopting a more stringent definition of tax evasion and agreeing to cooperate with other countries in evasion investigations. Unlike many other countries, Switzerland differentiates between tax fraud and tax evasion , and tax evasion [...]
The US Department of Justice dropped the term "enemy combatant" from its legal lexicon Friday while limiting the range of persons eligible to be held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay. Summarizing a memo submitted to the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department said in a press release that [...]
A former official of the China Ministry of Justice criticized torture and violence in Chinese prisons Friday, calling for greater security measures in correctional facilities. The comments come following the February cover-up of the death of a prisoner, whose death was officially attributed to a game of "hide and seek," but which was later revealed [...]
The Supreme Court of Afghanistan upheld a 20-year prison sentence for blasphemy against Afghani journalism student Sayad Parwaz Kambaksh in a secret February hearing, according to statements by his lawyer quoted in Thursday media reports. Kambaksh and his lawyer were unaware of the secret hearing , and were not given any opportunity to argue against [...]
Rep. Jennifer Coffey and Evan F. Nappen : "It's said that God created man and woman, but it took Sam Colt to make them equal. Domestic violence is deplorable. Abusing any person, whether man or woman, is wrong. The problem is when the issue of domestic violence is used to promote an anti-gun agenda to [...]
