Belarusian authorities Tuesday granted jailed opposition politician Alexander Kozulin a three-day release from prison to attend the funeral of his wife, who died on Saturday. Kozulin was sentenced to over five years in prison in July 2006 for leading unauthorized protests over the controversial re-election of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko earlier that year. Kozulin, his [...]
Leaders of 34 international bar associations and law societies called for the "immediate closure" of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in a letter released Monday. The letter, addressed to US President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said: Few governmental operations in democratic countries have shown such a profound disrespect [...]
Agents with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) urged EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson to approve California's request for a waiver that would have allowed it to impose stricter greenhouse gas emissions standards on cars and light trucks, saying that a denial could compromise the agency's integrity, according to internal documents released Tuesday by Sen. [...]
Nigeria's Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal on Tuesday upheld the results of last year's disputed presidential elections , saying that opposition groups failed to present sufficient evidence to support their fraud allegations . European Union and NGO observers questioned the results of last April's poll, and fraud allegations included multiple voting, stuffing and missing ballot boxes. [...]
The European Court of Justice on Tuesday ruled that an employee's "dismissal essentially based on the fact that a woman is at an advanced stage of in vitro fertilisation treatment is contrary to the principle of equal treatment for men and women." The ruling came in the case of an Austrian woman who claimed that [...]
Guatemala on Monday announced plans to declassify documents describing human rights abuses committed by its military during the country's 1960-1996 civil war . Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has created a panel to review the documents, which the military has thus far refused to release, with a view to selecting those that should be made public. [...]
The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a controversial plea agreement for former Israeli President Moshe Katsav , in which Katsav was permitted to plead guilty to lesser sex charges in exchange for a suspended sentence and the dropping of rape charges brought against him in 2006. Under a deal criticized by women's and civil [...]
A Malaysian court Tuesday rejected a bid to free five prominent members of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) , ruling that they were lawfully detained under Malaysia's controversial Internal Security Act (ISA) , which permits the government to detain suspects for two years without trial and to renew the detention indefinitely. The five were [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday challenging a Tennessee state law that requires convicted felons to pay "all outstanding legal financial obligations" before their voting rights are restored. The lawsuit, brought on behalf of three convicted felons who have completed their imprisonment terms, challenges Sections 40-29-202(b) and (c) [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that testimony from workers who suffered job bias but were not parties to a federal age discrimination case "is neither per se admissible nor per se inadmissible" under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The decision came in Sprint/United Management Co. v. Mendelsohn , where the US Court of Appeals [...]
