The UN human rights chief in Haiti said Friday that the human rights situation in the Caribbean nation had become "catastrophic". Thierry Fagart, who heads a team of some 30 UN observers, cited numerous violations of basic human rights, such as arbitrary arrests, torture and summary executions committed by Haitian National Police, and street violence [...]

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Explicitly evoking images of Germany in the 1930s, senior British judges and lawyers are warning that the Blair government's efforts to put pressure on the judiciary in the interpretation of the Human Rights Act while restricting traditional civil liberties in anti-terror legislation risks turning the country into a police state. Former law lord Lord Ackner [...]

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Fears have arisen in The Netherlands over the safety of Dutch Integration Minister Rita Verdonk after police Friday arrested seven people suspected of planning to assassinate two other Dutch politicians named on a Islamist "hit list" pinned to the body of assassinated Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh last November. Last week Verdonk triggered outrage in [...]

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US and local Iraqi sources suggested Sunday that the draft Iraqi constitution was heading towards approval after initial vote counts in Saturday's referendum . No formal results have as yet been issued, but local election officials described returns that would likely allow the charter to avoid defeat by two-thirds of voters in three of Iraq's [...]

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Toledo Ohio police arrested at least 60 people Saturday after rioting broke out following the cancellation of a planned march by American Nazis through a Toledo neighborhood. The march by the National Socialist Movement, which calls itself "America's Nazi Party", had been organized to highlight what party members called "black criminal behavior" in a neighborhood [...]

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