Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia and other members of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) were indicted Wednesday on two corruption charges. Zia and three the other BNP officials have been accused of embezzling funds from a charitable trust named after Zia’s deceased husband, former president Ziaur Rahman . In a second corruption allegation, [...]
The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) . This affirms the court’s 2012 decision , which rejected a preliminary injunction to halt the implementation of the ESM and the fiscal compact, but which imposed a cap on Germany’s contribution to the fund. The court stated [...]
The Cyprus government’s practice of detaining migrants seeking asylum in the island nation violates EU law, Amnesty International (AI) reported Tuesday. Individuals who have regularly been detained include Syrian refugees and women who have forcibly been separated from their young children. Research gathered recently during visits to the country show that authorities have been breaching [...]
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday condemned Turkey for violating the rights of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) . The court found that Ocalan, imprisoned on the Turkish island of Imarli since 1999, had been subjected to “inhuman” conditions from the time of his incarceration until [...]
A court in Cairo on Tusday sentenced four police officers convicted of negligence and manslaughter for their roles in connection with the deaths of 37 Islamist detainees who reportedly died of asphyxiation when a tear gas grenade was fired into the truck they were being transported in. At the time, the Interior Ministry had claimed [...]
A panel of UN human rights experts led by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syrian Arab Republic , announced on Tuesday a new investigative report into the Syrian conflict. The report describes horrific violence in Syria by rebel and government forces in recent months. Most striking is the [...]
The Myanmar legislature on Tuesday approved a new media law affording greater press freedoms to local media outlets. The law purportedly assures local media freedom from state censorship and attempts to promote high-quality journalistic practices by emphasizing ethics and responsibility. However, the law granting new freedoms is accompanied by another law passed the same day [...]
An Istanbul prosecutor on Monday charged five activists involved in anti-government protests last year. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu News Agency reported that the protesters, members of a solidarity group, are charged with “forming a criminal gang, staging illegal demonstrations and public provocation” relating to their involvement in the June 2013 protests over the government’s planned demolition [...]
Viacom and Google on Tuesday settled a copyright infringement lawsuit originally filed by Viacom in 2007. The media conglomerate Viacom is known for its television networks including Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, and VH1. In the original suit, Viacom sought $1 billion in damages as well as an injunction against Google’s YouTube service for allowing clips [...]
Russian President Vladimir Putin and representatives of Crimea signed a treaty on Tuesday that incorporates Crimea, currently a part of Ukraine, into the Russian Federation. The agreement comes after a referendum in which more than 95 percent of Crimean voters, largely ethnic Russians, elected to secede from Ukraine and request to join Russia. The US, [...]
