In The News

Steve Crawshaw June 22, 2004
At the United Nations this week, the US is expected to request an extension of a resolution exempting its military personnel from prosecution at the newly established International Criminal Court. To grant such a request, say human rights advocates Steve Crawshaw and Richard Dicker, would weaken the Court and send a dangerous signal to the world. The Bush Administration's insistence on...
Kristina Merkner June 18, 2004
A Frankfurt court has decided that it will enforce a German law allowing publishers to fix the prices of their books. An entrepreneurial journalist who had sold about 40 review copies of a book on the online auction site, eBay, was in violation of the law, the court said. There was some legal debate over whether European Union free-trade regulation made the law invalid, but the German book...
Ashis K. Biswas June 17, 2004
Mysteriously, merchant ships have sunk continuously at the Sandheads in India's Bay of Bengal, leading many to question why. More mysterious, however, is the fact that ships continue coming here and sinking. Official estimates indicate that at least 81 ships have gone down in this area in the past 30 years, including eight since 1997. Innumerable crewmen have lost their lives in these...
Zachary Abuza June 15, 2004
Since the much-hyped global ‘war on terror', the human rights situation in Southeast Asia has taken a turn for the worse. In the name of fighting Islamic terrorist groups in the region, says political scientist Zachary Abuza, governments are using state power to repress political opposition by targeting political dissidents and making widespread arrests without trial. Malaysia and Singapore...
Mohsen Rashid June 15, 2004
In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all private schools – regardless of the curricula they teach – might soon come under the strict control of Islamic social and religious codes. This article in the Khaleej Times reports that all private schools have been ordered by the Ministry of Education and Youth to revise their textbooks in order to disallow ideas and concepts contrary to Islamic teachings....
Jonathan Steele June 14, 2004
Amidst growing international and domestic criticism of human rights abuses in Iraq, the International Committee of the Red Cross is calling on the White House to clarify the status of deposed leader Saddam Hussein. Hussein and many Iraqis who served in his government have been held without being charged for any crime since their capture by the US. According to the Red Cross, international law...
Patrick Welter June 11, 2004
With 4 million Germans currently unemployed, immigrants have become an easy scapegoat to blame for job losses. And it is the potential immigrant who wants to settle down in Germany that faces the biggest roadblocks to immigration, notes this article in FAZ Weekly. Under a proposed immigration law, bureaucrats will be allowed to screen potential immigrants to see whether they will prove beneficial...