The leader of last month’s attempted military coup in Burkina Faso, General Gilbert Diendere, was charged Friday with crimes against humanity. Prosecutor Col. Sita Sangare, Burkina Faso’s director of military justice said that he has charged 23 people so far with charges ranging from murder and concealing the bodies of the dead to threatening state [...]

Five Ethiopian bloggers on Friday were acquitted of terrorism charges relating to publications on their website . The publications, critical of the government, landed nine bloggers in jail, and one charged in absentia, in April 2014, for violation of Ethiopia’s broad anti-terrorism laws . In July five bloggers were unexpectedly released after being cleared by [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Friday that Google’s efforts to digitize millions of books for an online library is permissible fair use. Google has scanned more than 20 million books since 2004 in an effort to provide people with a searchable catalog of books in all languages. The company claims [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Friday called for a halt to the “escalating campaign” against human rights activists taking place in Venezuela. According to human rights groups, the government has employed tactics intended to discredit and undermine the legitimacy of 28 international and Latin American human rights organizations by making allegations that the organizations do not [...]

Maine’s revised concealed carry law went into effect Thursday and allows legal gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit. The law was passed by the Maine State Legislature and approved by Governor Paul LePage in July. The law applies to people who are 21 or older or military members age 18 or older, [...]

The Supreme Court of India ruled Thursday that a new law intended to change the structure of judicial appointments is unconstitutional. Traditionally the Indian judiciary was appointed by a 20-year-old collegium of five senior judges, but the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Bill replaced that system last year with appointment by a panel of six [...]

The Superior Court of Maricopa County on Thursday struck down a 2012 Arizona law that mandated abortion pills be regulated according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as violating the state constitution. The law (HB 2036) required physicians to follow FDA guidelines when prescribing the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone, or RU-486, which limited prescription to [...]

The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association on Thursday cautioned Kazakhstan that its new bill amending the law on non-profit organizations may be detrimental to the existence of such groups within the country. The new bill establishes an operator that would be in charge of organizing and dispersing [...]

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday that Switzerland was wrong to prosecute former Turkish politician Doğu Perinçek for denying that the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was genocide. The court, by a vote of 10-7, held that Perinçek’s remarks were protected under Article [...]

Death row inmates in Indonesia have been denied the right to counsel, beaten and coerced into confessions, according to an Amnesty International (AI) report published Thursday. The country has executed 14 prisoners since President Joko Widodo took office in October 2014, all for drug charges. AI reported that in half of the cases it analyzed, [...]