human rights

"If corruption does not get solved effectively, the party will lose the people's trust and support," warned Hu Jintao, the party's general secretary and China's president in a 90-minute speech that was televised across the nation.

Eight hundred and seventy people were hurt earlier this week when a planned memorial for people killed in Egypt's revolution turned into an angry demonstration against the country's interim military government, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights said Thursday.

Just a day after its limited release, China swiftly decided to block Google+, highlighting once again the country's strict censorship practices.

Brooks Newmark, the Conservative MP for Braintree and a government whip, held talks on Monday with the controversial Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad, whose brutal repression of protests has been condemned by the UK. As the press and activists were outraged by the MP's meeting with Assad, the Foreign Office has insisted that Newmark's trip does not have government backing.

For the second time in the report's 10-year history, the United States is included in the State Department's annual report on human trafficking.

Beijing tax authorities are seeking more than £1m in unpaid taxes and fines from the outspoken Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who was released last week after nearly three months in detention, one of his close friends has said.

Israeli army sources told the Jerusalem Post on Monday night that new intelligence information obtained in recent days shows that participants of the flotilla planning to break Israel's sea blockade over the Gaza Strip later this week plan to kill Israeli Defence Forces soldiers who board their ships.

Israel backtracked on Monday on a threat to bar foreign journalists from entering the country for 10 years if they board a new international aid flotilla that plans to challenge the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has today issued an arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi over crimes against humanity committed against opponents of his regime.

Britain and China unveiled a series of deals worth 1.4 billion pounds ($2.3 billion) during a visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday, including a new agreement between energy group BG Group and Bank of China to help BG expand there.

An investigation by Amnesty International has failed to find evidence for these human rights violations and in many cases has discredited or cast doubt on them. It also found indications that on several occasions the rebels in Benghazi appeared to have knowingly made false claims or manufactured evidence.

Four top surviving leaders of Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime went on trial before a U.N.-backed court for the first time Monday, facing justice three decades after their movement caused the death of an estimated 1.7 million people.

The recent unrest in the Middle East and North Africa has enabled China to take a stand on international issues and reaffirm its own vision regarding conflict resolution.

A spokesman says the opposition insists that the strongman cannot be involved in any future government, but it may allow him to live out his last years in Libya at an isolated location.

The strange cases of Geert Wilders, John Galliano, Dominique Strauss Kahn and Roman Polanski seem to suggest that to the modern media and political establishment, racism is a more serious crime than rape.

China's foreign ministry has said that artist Ai Weiwei cannot leave Beijing without permission, a day after he was freed from police detention.

Ai Wei Wei is back at home after more than two months in detention. The Chinese activist and artist has been released on bail, after pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion, according to state news agencies.

First Lady Michelle Obama urged young Africans on Wednesday to fight for women's rights and battle the stigma of AIDS while using her husband's "yes, we can" campaign slogan to try and motivate youth across the continent.

When the US and Nato invaded Afghanistan in 2001 two reasons were widely advanced. One, the Taliban needed to surrender Bin Laden, and two, the US could not let the Islamist movement treat women so barbarically.

Four months into the conflict and while the battle for Libya is still going strong, various conspiracy theories have by now emerged. After Gaddafi's own theory of Al-Qaeda putting drugs in the people's Nescafe flopped, the idea that Libya could in fact be the theatre for a new cold war attracted quite a lot of attention.

A Tunisian court sentenced the country's ousted president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and his wife, Leila Trabelsi, to 35 years in prison and a fine of roughly $66 million after a trial in absentia for embezzlement and misuse of public funds, state news media said Monday night.

The number of forcibly displaced people around the world has reached a 15-year high, according to the UN high commission for refugees (UNHCR), with the vast majority languishing in poor countries ill-equipped to cater to their needs.

As anti-government feeling in Syria refuses to quiet down, in his latest speech following three months of unrest, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Monday he would form a committee to study reforming Syria's constitution, claiming it would make recommendations within a month.

Syrian President Bashar Assad plans to make his third major speech since protests against his government began in mid-March, the state news agency SANA reported.

Several dozen Sri Lankans deported by the UK have arrived back in Colombo on an overnight charter flight.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday pressed all African states to demand the Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi step down and take tougher action against his regime.

Following the broadcast of channel 4 documentary Sri Lanka's killing fields, three of the forty failed Sri Lankan asylum-seekers, scheduled to be forcibly removed from Gatwick to Colombo today, have had their deportations deferred.

As Britain renewed calls for Sri Lanka to investigate allegations of war crimes after video footage apparently showing the summary execution of naked and bound prisoners was broadcast on UK television, in the documentary Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, the Sri Lankan authorities hit back at the documentary.

Syrian troops trying to quash three months of protests are committing "alleged breaches of the most fundamental rights", while 1,100 unarmed civilians have been killed in the crackdown says a UN report.

Following the renewed international interest regarding the Sri Lankan civil war after the broadcast of "Sri Lanka Killing Field" on Channel 4, Ban Ki-Moon has suggested that he can only establish an international investigation if the Sri Lankan government consents, which seems highly unlikely.