The North Carolina State Department of Corrections filed a lawsuit against the North Carolina Medical Board Tuesday, alleging that recent policy changes preventing doctors' participation in lethal injections prevent the corrections department from carrying out executions. Under North Carolina law, a doctor must be present at all executions and changes made to lethal injection procedures [...]
Italian patient's rights group Associazione Lucacoscioni said Tuesday that prosecutors have cleared anesthesiologist Dr. Mario Riccio, the physician being investigated for assisting in the December death of paralyzed right-to-die advocate Piergiorgio Welby . Shortly after Welby's death, several conservative Italian lawmakers had called for Riccio's arrest, characterizing him as a murderer. The conservative lawmakers were [...]
Reporters will not be allowed to attend hearings that will determine if the 14 "high-value" terror suspects who were transferred to Guantanamo Bay from secret CIA prisons last September are "enemy combatants," Defense Department officials announced Tuesday. This will be the first time that Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearings, which play a role in determining [...]
Native American plaintiffs in the decade-old Indian Trust case have rejected a new $7 billion settlement proposal from the US government but the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee nonetheless says he will hold a hearing later this month to provide administration officials, plaintiffs, and representatives from other interested parties an opportunity to testify [...]
The US Department of Defense announced Tuesday that Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England has concluded that 55 Guantanamo Bay detainees are eligible for transfer after reviewing the results of a second round of administrative review board (ARB) hearings held at the US military prison between January 30, 2006 and December 6, 2006. The other [...]
US Army Specialist Agustin Aguayo was convicted of desertion Tuesday for fleeing a base in Germany to avoid redeployment to Iraq. Though the conviction could have carried as many as seven years in prison, Aguayo was only sentenced to eight months. At court-martial, Aguayo said he believed the war in Iraq is immoral and admitted [...]
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Tuesday criticized the poor human rights records of several US allies and denounced the genocide in Darfur while announcing the publication of the 2006 US State Department Country Reports on human rights. Despite the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq have received hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid [...]
The US state of Washington has filed a claim against the federal Department of Health and Human Services challenging a regulation that restricts access to Medicaid benefits for infants born to immigrants in the United States. The regulation extends the provisions of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 , which requires states to withhold Medicaid [...]
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni announced Tuesday that police would implement more transparent procedures for re-arresting suspects released by the courts in an effort to appease the country's judiciary, which went on strike Monday. Despite these promises, one of Uganda's most senior judges, Justice James Ogoola , said the judges and lawyers would continue their strike [...]
Philippines President Gloria Arroyo on Tuesday signed a rigorous new anti-terror bill into law. Among other provisions, the Human Security Act allows police to detain suspected terrorists for three days without charges, but it also allows victims of unlawful arrest to collect up to 500,000 pesos ($10,350) for each day of wrongful detainment. In addition, [...]
