World Report 2005, Human Rights Watch, released January 13, 2005 . Excerpt: Any discussion of detainee abuse in 2005 must begin with the United States, not because it is the worst violator but because it is the most influential. New evidence demonstrated that the problem was much greater than it first appeared after the shocking [...]

White House spokesperson Scott McClellan Wednesday dismissed findings from the latest Human Rights Watch annual report alleging that the US has made deliberate and blatant use of torture and the inhumane treatment of prisoners in its "war on terror". HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth wrote in the report's introduction:Any discussion of detainee abuse in 2005 [...]

UK fathers' rights group Fathers 4 Justice announced Wednesday that it would disband after the Sun newspaper published a report that some of its members planned to abduct the 5-year-old son of British Prime Minister Tony Blair . The group, notorious for past stunts such as a 2004 powder attack on Blair in the House [...]

Interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday asked his defense minister to create a plan for removing 24 Jewish settler outposts, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice , from the Palestinian West Bank. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Cabinet originally decided to dismantle the outposts last March as part of [...]

The US military confirmed Wednesday that it currently holds at least 8 female prisoners as security threats at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad after captors of an American journalist demanded the US free all Iraqi women detainees within 72 hours. Armed Iraqis kidnapped the journalist, Jill Carroll of the Christian Science Monitor , on [...]

Egyptian officials have said that 143 Sudanese refugees, detained by Cairo police after a three-month sit-in protest was forcibly broke up, will be released. As many 600 other Sudanese refugees, some of whom hail from the war torn region of Darfur , face deportation by Egyptian Foreign Ministry for their alleged role in the demonstration, [...]

The new chief judge in the Saddam Hussein trial is a member of the banned Baath party and should be replaced, Ali Faisal, executive manager of Iraq's Debaathification Commission , said Wednesday. According to Faisal, the newly appointed Sayeed al-Hamashi, "is the object of a debaathification inquiry." Hamashi, picked by tribunal officials to preside over [...]

Five hundred Bosnian police officers launched an ultimately unsuccessful operation on Wednesday near the town of Han Pijesak in an failed attempt to find and arrest either Radovan Karadzic or Ratko Mladic , both of whom are accused of genocide . At a news conference, a spokesman for the police acknowledged that the target of [...]

Fiji Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has said legislation offering amnesty to those involved in a May 2000 racially-motivated coup will be delayed. The Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Immunity Bill has prompted widespread controversy since it was introduced last year, with the country's military commander, Commodore Voreque Bainimarama , threatening to overthrow the government over the measure. [...]

Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, Supreme Court of the United States, January 18, 2006 . Excerpt from the Court's opinion per Justice O'Connor: If enforcing a statute that regulates access to abortion would be unconstitutional in medical emergencies, invalidating the statute entirely is not always necessary or justified, for lower courts may [...]