Monday, Nov 17th
Last update10:22:33 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
John Kurtz, the Orlando Copwatch founder who was facing six years in prison for battery on a law enforcement officer, was acquitted of that felony charge last week.
But he was convicted of resisting arrest without violence – even though the officer testified he was not resisting – proving once again that Florida has an unethical and unconstitutional habit of dishing out resisting arrest convictions without underlying charges to justify the arrest in the first place.
A US human rights group has called on foreign governments to prosecute George W Bush and some of his senior officials for war crimes if the Obama administration fails to investigate a growing body of evidence against the former president over the use of torture.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday that the US authorities were legally obliged to investigate the top echelons of the Bush administration over crimes such as torture, abduction and other mistreatment of prisoners. It says that the former administration's legal team was part of the conspiracy in preparing opinions authorising abuses that they knew to have no standing in US or international law.
Frequently taken from their beds in the middle of the night, children have been interrogated without the presence of lawyers, their parents or other family members, and nearly all have been subjected to some form of either physical or psychological abuse during their arrest and questioning.
This practice violates both international conventions, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Fourth Geneva Convention, and Israel's own laws related to the rights of minors.
The levels of malnutrition among children fleeing Somalia's drought could lead to a "human tragedy of unimaginable proportions", the UN refugee head Antonio Guterres has said.
Young children are dying on their way to or within a day of arrival at camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, the UNHCR says. It estimates that a quarter of Somalis are either displaced within the country or living outside as refugees. The drought is compounded by the violence in south and central Somalia.
We've already had complaints against TSA agents of toddlers getting patted down, a woman's breasts being exposed and groping.
Now a 95-year-old woman in the final stages of a battle with leukaemia has been allegedly detained and humiliatingly searched at a Florida airport - and the TSA is defending their actions.
Jean Weber, of Destin, Florida, claims her mother in a wheelchair was asked to remove an adult diaper in order to complete a pat-down search.
srael on Sunday began tearing down a section of its contentious West Bank separation barrier near a village that has come to symbolize Palestinian opposition to the enclosure, the military said.
The rerouting marked a major victory for the residents of Bilin and the international groups that have backed their struggle. But they said it fell short of their demands to remove the structure from the village altogether and vowed to continue with their weekly protests.
The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on activists planning to challenge Israel's sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, warning that they will face action from Israeli authorities and that American participants may also be violating U.S. law.
The U.S. State Department said Friday that attempts to break the blockade are "irresponsible and provocative" and that Israel has well-established means of delivering assistance to the Palestinian residents of Gaza. It noted that the territory is run by the militant Hamas group, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, and that Americans providing support to it are subject to fines and jail.
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