The Supreme Court of Cyprus unanimously ruled Thursday that Deputy Attorney General Rikkos Erotokritou should be impeached for his inappropriate actions when he accused Attorney General Costas Clerides of bribery during a nationally televised press conference in April. The court concluded that publicly announcing these serious, criminal and unfounded allegations was “false, morally reprehensible, and [...]
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi pardoned two Al Jazeera journalists Wednesday who had been sentenced in late August for releasing video footage that allegedly contained false news in support of the Muslim Brotherhood . Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, along with nearly 100 other prisoners, were freed from jail following el-Sisi’s announcement on his Facebook [...]
A group of UN human rights experts on Tuesday urged authorities in Saudi Arabia to block the execution of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr , who was convicted of involvement in the Arab Spring protests when he was 17. The experts said, “ny judgment imposing the death penalty upon persons who were children at the time of [...]
The advocate general of the European Court of Justice proclaimed on Wednesday that the copious amount of EU user data transferred to the US by various technology companies violates EU’s data protection and rights to privacy laws. The Luxembourg court’s advocate general Yves Bot suggested that the court do away with the “Safe Harbor” rules [...]
Denis Sassou Nguesso , President of the Republic of the Congo, announced on Tuesday that he is moving forward with a national constitutional referendum, in what many call a ploy to extend his presidency. The referendum will concern issues such as raising the maximum age for presidential candidates and eliminating the two-term limit for presidents. [...]
The US Department of Defense (DOD) announced Tuesday that it had transferred Guantanamo detainee Abdul Shalabi. Shalabi, who likely was a bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden , was transferred to the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia after a Periodic Review Board determined in June that, although he may still sympathize with extremists, his [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Central District of California on Tuesday invalidated the copyright claim to the lyrics of the song “Happy Birthday.” The court considered the question of whether Warner/Chapelle Music, inc. , as the successors of Summy Co., had a valid copyright claim to the lyrics of “Happy Birthday.” [...]
The US Senate on Tuesday voted against a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of gestation. Supporters of the bill, which needed 60 votes but only received 54, contend that fetuses begin to feel pain around this time in the gestation period. All but two Senate democrats voted nay. The vote was an [...]
Lawyers for Bowe Bergdahl filed a petition with the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals asking for the public release of unclassified documents that were admitted into evidence in a public preliminary hearing last week. In 2009 Bowe Bergdahl, then a Sergeant in the US Army, was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan and held [...]
Two UN human rights experts on Tuesday called on the Philippines government to investigate the deaths of three human rights defenders in the province of Surigao del Sur, Mindanao. One activist, the director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agriculture and Development (ALCADEV) , was found murdered in one of the ALCADEV classrooms in the [...]
