According to Iranian doctor Shahram Azam, Iranian-Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi was tortured and raped during her detention by Iranian authorities before her death in July 2003. The claims by Dr. Azam contradict the conclusions of Iranian authorities who said the death could have been accidental. Aazam said he was the first doctor to examine Kazemi [...]

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mark Lagon has said the United States will seek international censure of Cuba's human rights record by presenting a resolution at the annual meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights . The resolution will look at prior actions taken by the commission to determine whether Cuba has been [...]

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on Thursday called on ousted Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev to resign his post to ensure stability in the Central Asian country. Akayev has given conflicting messages on whether he would resign as leader or seek to retain the position following a week of turmoil. OSCE also warned [...]

In Thursday's environmental law news, Australian state and territory leaders have agreed to establish their own carbon-trading system which would set a cap on the total volume of greenhouse gases an industry can emit. They would then divide the cap into permits, equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide, which companies could trade with each [...]

Leading Thursday's corporations and securities law news, Canada has retaliated against several US goods by levying a 15% surtax on cigarettes, oysters, and live swine. The action is a response to the Byrd Amendment which allows American companies to keep the proceeds that Washington collects in anti-dumping disputes. Canada and other countries say that the [...]

Rwanda's main group of Hutu rebels denounced the 1994 genocide of Tutsis for the first time Thursday and announced they were ending their war against the Rwanda government. Ignace Murwanashyaka, president of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the delegation representing the rebel organization, said the group will lay down its arms [...]

A family spokesman says that severely brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo has died. 10:02 AM ET – Terri Schiavo's death comes nearly 14 days after removal of her feeding tube. Her death has been confirmed by George Felos, attorney for Terri's husband Michael Schiavo. News reports are giving her time of death as just after [...]

A presidential commission on Thursday said US intelligence agencies know "disturbingly little" about threats posed by the nation's most dangerous adversaries, and the commission recommended more than 70 changes that President Bush can make to improve intelligence. The WMD Presidential Commission appointed by President Bush to determine why US spy agencies mistakenly concluded that Iraq [...]

An appeals court in Afghanistan has reduced the sentences of three US citizens who had been convicted of torturing Afghans and running a private jail in Kabul. The three men, Jonathan Idema , Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo, who were in Afghanistan on a freelance terrorist hunt, were arrested in July, 2004 after Afghan forces [...]

Israel's Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the country can recognize non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism not performed in Israel, a decision which challenges the Orthodox monopoly over Israili religious affairs. Up to this time, converts who sought Israeli citizenship needed an Orthodox rabbi to perform the conversion in Israel. Now, however, people who are converted by [...]