The partner of late internet freedom activist Aaron Swartz has accused the US Department of Justice of “dragging its heels” over an investigation into his prosecution after it emerged that his political beliefs played a role in its case against him.

Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman said she was “angry and really upset” when she learned from congressional staffers from the government oversight committee that a document written by Swartz five years ago was a key element in his …

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More than 40 people have died, many shot by police, and hundreds have been injured amid violence in Bangladesh over the sentencing to death of an Islamist politician by a court investigating the atrocities of the war of independence from Pakistan.

The Bangladesh court sentenced 73-year-old Delwar Hossain Sayedee, vice-president of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, to death on Thursday, finding him guilty of eight charges connected with the 1971 war, including murder, arson, rape and religious …

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Having forsaken hopes of a settlement to avert the self-imposed austerity cuts known as “sequestration,” progressive critics of the unfolding events continued to decry the folly on Friday.

Not reserving their ire for politicians alone, critics put much of the blame for the current state of affairs squarely at the door of the media, who busily made work of the “blame game” in Washington but generally failed to recognize the larger context within which the sequestration …

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More than 140 Nobel laureates led by archbishop Desmond Tutu urged China on Wednesday to release Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, a rights activist jailed for subversion since 2009.

In a letter also signed by 400,000 people from more than 130 countries, the laureates called on China’s president-in-waiting Xi Jinping to release Liu and his wife Liu Xia, who has not been charged but is being held under house arrest.

The petition was being submitted to …

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The body of an openly gay candidate for mayor of Clarksdale, Miss., was recovered by authorities today, and although his death is being ruled a homicide, officials say they don’t believe it was a hate crime.

Marco McMillian was just 34, one of the first viable candidates for mayor in conservative Mississippi who was openly gay. While he wasn’t assured of winning the seat being vacated after more than two decades by Mayor Henry Espy Jr., …

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Over the past year, thousands of civilians were brutally murdered during confrontations in Syria, people in Mali fell victim to an escalation in human rights abuses and women in Afghanistan and Pakistan continued to suffer great discrimination.

But underneath the radar, away from international attention, governments and armed groups are also abusing the rights of men, women and children in many other countries.

Here are five of them:

click here to learn what they are. …

US Army Private Bradley Manning read a prepared statement on Thursday, revealing before a packed military courtroom exactly what government and military information he leaked to the whistleblower media outlet Wikileaks, and why he chose to do so.

Manning has reportedly pleaded guilty to providing Wikileaks with confidential military information though he has denied the most serious charge against him, “aiding the enemy.”

According to FireDogLake’s Kevin Gosztola, reporting live from the courtroom, Manning’s plea makes …

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JOHANNESBUG — The footage is shaky but unmistakable. A slender black man dressed in a red T-shirt, black pants and sneakers is tied to the back of a police truck. He kicks. He writhes. The vehicle pulls away, dragging the man behind it. Police officers run along with him. Cellphone cameras snap away.

“What did he do?” bystanders shouted.

“It was him who started it,” a police officer replied.

Late Tuesday night, the man, who has since …

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Washington (CNN) — Struggling again with an issue important to women and minority groups, House Republicans on Thursday failed to pass their version of a new Violence Against Women Act and then split over a Senate version that won approval with unanimous Democratic support.

The measure now goes to President Barack Obama, who said in a statement that it was “an important step towards making sure no one in America is forced to live in fear.”

“I …

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WASHINGTON — A central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 may be in peril, judging from tough questioning on Wednesday from the Supreme Court’s more conservative members.

Justice Antonin Scalia called the provision, which requires nine states, mostly in the South, to get federal permission before changing voting procedures, a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked a skeptical question about whether people in the South are more racist …

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