HUMAN RIGHTS

Four South Korean activists have been detained by China in the northeastern city of Dalian. The activists were meeting with refugees from North Korea in China in order to learn about their experiences.

Texas, already facing flack for putting an innocent man to death in 2004, likely executed another innocent man in 1989, according to the university's Human Rights Law Review.

Former U.S. president George W. Bush told ABC News Tuesday that he supports White House hopeful Mitt Romney, the Republican party's presumptive nominee for president.

Japan has allowed the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) to meet in Tokyo on Monday, the first time the group has met in an Asian country, drawing renewed anger from China.

On Monday, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Myanmar to meet with top officials there. His decision to visit with Thein Sein signifies Myanmar's growing diplomatic importance in the region.

A Human Rights Watch report released on Monday claims NATO failed to investigation the deaths of a number of noncombatants killed in airstrikes during last year's Libyan revolution.

In a video posted online on May 7, members of Anonymous, a hacktivist collective known for fighting against censorship and human rights abuse, endorse Black Bloc, a riot tactic in which protesters covering their faces in black create and inspire anarchy through violent destruction of property.

An auction of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei's porcelain sunflower seeds at Sotheby's in New York on Wednesday has fetched almost $800,000 - but it's unclear how much of the money will find its way to the hundreds of Chinese workers who made them.

State media said the Bashar al-Assad regime had called on the UN Security Council and Ban Ki-moon for assistance in tackling the escalating crimes committed by terrorists receiving help from abroad.

Armed men set fire to a home in a Christian-populated village near the central Nigerian city Jos Wednesday night and then fired upon the residents as they fled to escape the blaze, killing at least seven and wounding another, local authorities said.

The first explosion occurred in the al-Qazzaz district in the south of the city, shortly before 8 a.m. local time.

Same-sex marriage advocates are confident that the nation is moving gradually towards marriage equality, but they will need to contend with a majority of states -- North Carolina among them -- that restrict marriage to a man and a woman.

Gabriel Shumba, chief of ZEF and a Zimbabwean human rights attorney, praised the ruling.

Among the flurry of decrees Vladimir Putin issued after returning to the presidency for a historic third term were calls for faster privatization and government-sponsored boost in capital investment and closer ties with the US, based on equality, non-interference in internal affairs and respect for one another's interests.

Fighting between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's forces erupted in an oil producing province in eastern Syria, residents and activists said on Sunday, the eve of a parliamentary election the authorities say shows reforms are under way.

Vice President Joe Biden offered a tacit endorsement of gay marriage on Meet the Press on Sunday, a series of remarks the White House and Obama campaign scrambled to walk back in a fit of apparent cognitive dissonance.

A US drone attack targeting a Taliban militant compound in Pakistan has killed nine people Saturday, Pakistani authorities have alleged.

At the end of the high-level strategic talks between the U.S. and China, both countries have vowed to improve relations and to prevent human rights from becoming a major diplomatic stumbling block.

A senior U.N. official expressed concern over the declining health of two Palestinian prisoners in Israel, who have been on a hunger strike for over two months and are in critical condition.

Mitt Romney assailed the Obama administration for its handling of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng's attempted defection, building on his stance that Obama has not pressed China enough on human rights abuses.

Security forces and pro-regime gunmen were called in to break up anti-government demonstrations in the city's main university complex after approximately 1,500 students began protesting in the main campus late on Wednesday.