State and national housing advocates filed a class action lawsuit Wednesday arguing that Louisiana's Hurricane Katrina recovery program, Road Home Louisiana , discriminates against African-American homeowners. The federally-funded program awards grants to homeowners in the lesser of the following two amounts: the pre-storm value of the home or the cost of the damage. Because home [...]
Maiko Tagusari : "In its Concluding Observations, the UN Human Rights Committee made it clear that Japan is going against the requirements under the Covenant and is strongly required to end its continuous and expanded usage of the death penalty. At the end of the session, Mr. Rivas Posada, President of HRC, stated that the [...]
A panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) seeking to have bribery charges against him dropped. Jefferson argued that the grand jury indictment against him was based on evidence protected by the US Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause , which makes [...]
Former Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian continued a hunger strike in the Tucheng jail in suburban Taipei Thursday after being incarcerated Wednesday, according to local media reports. While there are no official charges against Chen, the former leader of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was arrested Tuesday and questioned by prosecutors for some five hours. He [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Wednesday that the International Criminal Court (ICC) needs more vocal support from its member countries in a memorandum sent to member governments in advance of their annual meeting . Citing recent efforts to convince the UN Security Council to suspend the case against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir , HRW counsel [...]
The Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) and the Asociacion Pro Derechos Humanos de España (APDHE) filed suit Thursday in Spain's National Court against Alfredo Cristiani , the former president of El Salvador. The groups claim that Cristiani, along with 14 others, committed crimes against humanity, citing a 1989 incident in which six Jesuit priests [...]
Germany's lower house of parliament voted Wednesday to approve a new law which would expand the power of Germany's federal police agency, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) , to undertake online and telephone surveillance. Under the proposed law, a judge would be required to order an online search before BKA agents would be permitted to engage in [...]
Authors of a new report on detainees released from US detention in Guantanamo Bay are urging US president-elect Barack Obama to form an independent, nonpartisan commission with subpoena powers to investigate the treatment of US detainees in Guantanamo as well as in facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq . The report, released on Wednesday by human [...]
The European Court of First Instance on Wednesday denied an appeal by the Danish company Lego to restore its EU trademark for its interlocking toy bricks. The decision upheld an Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) ruling that the distinctive nature of the product is its functional shape, and cannot be trademarked under [...]
A court in Brandenburg, Kentucky began civil trial proceedings Wednesday against the Kentucky-based Imperial Klans of America over injuries sustained to then-16-year old Jordan Gruver, a US citizen of Panamanian descent, during a racially motivated beating allegedly perpetrated by members of the IKA. The lawsuit, brought on behalf of Gruver by the Southern Poverty Law [...]
