Human rights

Norway's Nobel committee held its Peace Prize awards ceremony on Friday without the award's recipient, human rights activist Liu Xiaobo.

India and the European Union announced a breakthrough in their free trade talks on Friday. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the free trade agreement (FTA) could be signed in 2011, after a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the 11th EU-India summit in Brussels.

Julian Assange was refused bail by UK's Westminster magistrates court on Tuesday, where the charges were read out to him a short while ago, setting off a judicial process leading to his possible extradition to Sweden.

Julian Assange appeared at UK's Westminster magistrates court a short while ago, where the charges were read out to him, setting off a judicial process leading to his possible extradition to Sweden. The Sky News said Assange had sought Australian consular assistance and that staff of the Australian High Commission were with him inside the court.

Global law firm Clifford Chance has denied the charges of discrimination slapped against it in a lawsuit filed by a former associate in connection with 2007 layoffs.

The U.S. government had been secretly sheltering Nazi war criminals for several years and has clashed with other nations over their fate, a 600-page report, which the Department of Justice has tried to keep hidden from the public, reveals.

A group called “Manhattan Declaration” has written a letter to Steve Jobs to restore the “anti-gay” apps from the Apple store, the Manhattan Declaration blog said.

Iran on Wednesday, executed a woman convicted of murdering the wife of a former football star. Shahla Jahed who was believed to be the mistress of Naser Mohammadkhani, a football legend, was hanged to death at the Evin prison in North Western Tehran.

A spokesman for the U.S. State Department denied on Monday that his agency's diplomats were spies, after the release of hundreds of thousands of secret and unclassified cables by the Wikileaks organization.

As a dossier of 2251,287 U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks tumbles out, bygone issues will be interpreted in a new light as raw details of closed-door diplomatic haggling reveal.

The year 2010 was not good for Google in China and the hacking was, indeed, part of a sabotage attempt carried out with help from the government quarters, reveal the classified U.S. documents released by Wikileaks on Sunday. China to Germany, US diplomacy generally smacks of quid-pro-quo dealings, as ever.

The coalition of nations waging war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan declared their intention, dependent on actual conditions on the ground, to hand over full responsibility the nation by 2014.

Google has donned the cloak of Internet's guardian angel once again, condemning the 'digital disruptions' that some governments unleash and calling for new trade rules to prevent countries from setting up intractable 'trade barriers' of a new kind.

In her first major speech to the supporters, Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi called upon the democratic forces in the country to work together. Thousands of cheering supporters flocked the headquarters of the National Democratic league (NLD) in Yangon on Sunday afternoon to catch a glimpse of their leader.

Authorities in Australia, which is a staunch opponent of death penalty, are in a dilemma over whether they should deport Honeymoon Killer Gabe Watson, who completed serving his prison term in Australia on Wednesday, to Alabama, U.S., a pro-death penalty state that wants to try him again over his wife's death.

Low voter turnout and allegations of fraud marred the polls in Myanmar. Counting is currently under way as polling booths closed in the late hours of Sunday. Though official figures are yet to be released, media reports suggest that not many people were enthusiastic about the elections. This is for the first time in 20 years that the Burmese people have been allowed to vote.