American singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams has brought a smile to the faces of millions of people around the world with his song Happy – including in Iran, until the authorities there reportedly arrested young people who filmed themselves dancing to the tune. National TV channel IRIB broadcast a report May 20...

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights assessed on Monday that over 162,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict – with thousands more missing, presumably captured or kidnapped by the Bashar al-Assad regime – as divisions within the opposition camp deepened worries that the West was showing insufficient...

A gathering of lawyers and jurists at United Nations headquarters today is asking whether the U.N. body tasked with dealing with Palestinian refugees – UNRWA – is providing humanitarian relief or “prolonging the Palestinian refugee problem.” The issue is also addressed in this month’s edition of The Tower Magazine in an...

Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday acknowledged that what he described as “raw data” – viewed by him as well as by other U.S. officials – indicated that “there may have been, as France has suggested, a number of instances in which chlorine has been used in the conduct...

Turkish officials throughout the week and into Friday scrambled to respond to last week’s “Freedom of the Press” report – published annually by the Washington-based Freedom House watchdog group – which had downgraded Turkey from “Partly Free” to “Not Free” and had explained that “constitutional guarantees of freedom of the...

A recent report from a Palestinian human rights group shows a sharp rise in human rights violations in areas under Palestinian control. A report published yesterday by the Ramallah-based Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), “offers a hint at the kind of scrutiny the Palestinian Authority might face after joining United Nations agencies...