The position of UN Special Adviser for Genocide Prevention will be made permanent to solidify UN efforts against genocide, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced in a speech marking the 13th anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide observed on Monday. Ban called on all nations to work together to prevent genocide, saying "Preventing genocide is a [...]

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Tuesday that the Malaysian government would not compel bloggers to register with the state, noting that existing laws and regulations were sufficient in case action needs to be taken against those who "cross the limits" by posting false information online. Last week, Energy, Water and Communications Deputy Minister [...]

The US House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Tuesday for US Justice Department documents relating to the firings of eight US Attorneys . In a letter accompanying the subpoena, committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) noted that the DOJ's "incomplete response" to the committee's request for documents "falls far [...]

Serbia's war crimes court found four members of the Scorpions paramilitary group guilty of murder Tuesday for their role in the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica . The charges were based on video footage shot by the four men as six Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica were shot dead. Scorpions commander Slobodan [...]

A federal judge Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss the terrorism charges against Jose Padilla based on Padilla's allegations that he was tortured while detained as an "enemy combatant." Padilla has said that that he was abused, threatened, administered either PCP or LSD as a truth serum, and subjected to sleep deprivation and stress positions [...]

Bangladesh's Emergency Powers Rules of 2007, instituted when Bangladeshi President Iajuddin Ahmed declared a state of emergency in January, has been amended to require the approval of concerned state officials before suspects face trial, appeal, bail, or even investigation, according to an announcement from the Bangladeshi Ministry of Home Affairs Monday. The amendment also permits [...]

Chinese officials Tuesday criticized US plans to file a case against China at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for lax enforcement of copyright violations and trademarks. Wang Xinpei, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce , released a statement Tuesday expressing the country's "strong dissatisfaction" to the US decision and warned that the case [...]

A lawyer for the Venezuelan government said Monday that the US is preventing Luis Posada Carriles from being brought to trial for allegations that he plotted the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner . Carriles is currently in the US awaiting an immigration trial after being arrested for illegally entering Texas across the Mexican border [...]

A Chinese lawyer and outspoken critic of the Chinese government has accused authorities of torturing him to confess to subversion charges, according to letters and recordings that were recently made public by a fellow activist. Gao Zhisheng alleges that he was handcuffed or made to sit in a cross-legged position for hundreds of hours with [...]

The city government of Washington, DC on Monday asked the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals for an en banc rehearing of a case that led to a controversial ruling last month invalidating the city's handgun ban . City lawyers warn that the current ruling "severely limits" the ability of local and federal legislatures to [...]