North Korea’s supreme court sentenced American student Otto Warmbier, who was arrested while visiting the country, to 15 years of hard labour for crimes against the state.

A Libyan court sentenced Muammar Gaddafi’s most prominent son, Saif al-Islam, and eight others to death over war crimes including killings of protesters during the 2011 revolution that ended his father’s rule.

Indonesian officials have dropped a plan to require female students to pass virginity tests in order to graduate from high school and apologised after sparking a public outcry, human rights campaigners said.

Islamic State militants carried out a mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi prison inmates when they seized the country’s second-largest city of Mosul in June, according to an international rights group.

Militants from the Islamic State (IS) group carried out a mass killing of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers captured when the extremists overran a military base north of Baghdad in June, a leading international watchdog has said.

Syria’s government has razed thousands of homes as “collective punishment” of communities that back the opposition in the capital Damascus and in Hama province, Human Rights Watch said.

Russia has apologised to two foreign journalists who were repeatedly questioned and detained by police during a trip to report on the 2014 Winter Olympics preparations in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Jihadi-led rebel fighters in Syria killed at least 190 civilians and abducted more than 200 during an offensive against pro-regime villages, committing a war crime, an international human rights group said.

An international human rights group has accused Syrian government forces and pro-regime militias of carrying out summary executions earlier this year that left at least 248 people dead.

A human rights group says it has found documents and physical evidence indicating Syrians were arbitrarily detained and tortured in government prisons in the eastern city of Raqqa.

Damon Hill has called on FIA president Jean Todt to take an ethical stance with regard to the controversial Bahrain Grand Prix.

Syrian government forces appear to have recently made use of cluster bombs, weapons banned by most countries because of the danger they pose to civilians, a New York-based rights watchdog has said.

Members of Syria’s armed opposition have subjected detainees to torture and committed summary executions, an international human rights group has said.

The head of the UN observers in Syria says that the growing violence is derailing their mission and could prompt the unarmed force to pull out.

Syrian troops have planted landmines along routes used by people fleeing the country's violence and trying to reach neighbouring Turkey, an international human rights group said today.

Syrian forces have detained and tortured children as young as 13 as president Bashar al-Assad’s regime tries to crush a nearly 11-month-old uprising, Human Rights Watch said, as fresh clashes erupted between regime troops and rebels in the country’s south.

ETHIOPIA is forcing tens of thousands of people off their land so it can lease it to foreign investors, leaving former landowners destitute and in some cases starving, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday.

SYRIAN government forces have carried out crimes against humanity as they try to crush opposition to President Bashar al-Assad in the restive province of Homs, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

Libyan rebel forces seeking to oust Colonel Muammar Gaddafi have looted shops, homes and medical facilities in some of the towns they seized in the country's western mountains, Human Rights Watch said today.

Syrian security and intelligence agencies have detained and tortured hundreds of protesters since anti-regime rallies engulfed the country last month, a leading international rights group said.

MORE than 100 people have died in an iron-fisted security crackdown in unrest-swept eastern Libya, Human Rights Watch said, fearing a “catastrophe” as protests spread closer to the capital.

UGANDAN LRA rebels have kidnapped at least 700 people in attacks in Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic since February last year, a rights group said yesterday.

IRAQI militias are increasingly torturing and executing men suspected of homosexuality, but the authorities in Baghdad are doing nothing to stop the violence, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.

Gay men are being murdered across Iraq in a systematic campaign by militia, a human rights group said today.

A leading international human rights group appealed to Saudi King Abdullah today to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft.

Up to 38 people who may have been held in secret CIA prisons are missing, according to an American human rights group.

THE UN Human Rights Council will hold a special session on violations in Sudan’s strife-torn western region of Darfur today, after a rebuke from Kofi Annan that it has not paid enough attention to rights violations in the province.

US-based Human Rights Watch today said that the trial against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in which he was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity was not carried out fairly.

A US-trained military expert today disputed an Israeli claim that it had nothing to do with an explosion that killed eight Palestinian beach-goers in the Gaza Strip last Friday, an incident that has turned a critical spotlight on Israel’s military practices.