HUMAN RIGHTS

Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fuele visited the Turkish capital on Thursday to launch a new positive agenda aimed at overcoming the numerous hurdles to the country joining the union.

Afghanistan, bracing for a potential sharp decline in financial support from the West amid fears of a fresh military offensive by the Taliban insurgents, has demanded $4.1 billion a year for its security forces after the foreign troops pull out in 2014, ahead of the NATO summit starting Sunday.

Graffiti, some containing themes from the Anonymous movement, against Egypt's military rule has littered the streets of Cairo as its citizens' disillusion with the current regime continues to fester.

A group of retired Chinese Communist Party members have called for the resignation of Zhou Yongkang, the head of China's Public Security Ministry.

A report on Wednesday reveals that child marriage has become less prevalent in South Asia over the last two decades, but not for brides of all age groups. Adolescents over 15 are still marrying at about the same rate as they did two decades ago.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff inaugurated on Wednesday a truth commission set up to investigate human rights abuses during the country's military regime 27 years after democracy was restored.

The German hamlet of Villa Baviera in Central Chile wants to put its macabre history in the past and promote itself as a tourist destination.

The former Bosnian Serb general, on trial for the murder of tens of thousands of Muslim men, women and children during the early 1990s Bosnian war, entered The Hague courtroom clapping his hands and gave the thumbs-up sign.

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.