The trial against former first lady of the Ivory Coast, Simone Gbagbo, began on Friday in Abidjan for her role in the violence that resulted from the aftermath of the 2010 elections. She is charged with “attempting to undermine the security of the state” for her support of the efforts of her husband, Laurent Gbagbo [...]

The City of Providence, Rhode Island filed a class action suit against Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras on Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York . The complaint alleges Petrobras engaged in a fraudulent scheme to inflate the value of the company’s net income by falsely reporting bribe-related expenses [...]

A Pakistani court on Friday issued a non-bailable arrest warrant for Maulana Abdul Aziz , the head cleric of the Red Mosque in Islamabad. The court order comes after Aziz was accused of threatening protestors who were unhappy with his support of the Peshawar massacre which resulted in the deaths of around 150 people, most [...]

The Chinese government declared on Friday that it intends to publish a list of approved religious venues in order to “root out” illegal religious activities. The proclamation was made by director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs Wang Zuoan , on Xinhua , China’s official news source. Zuoan stated that the government will create [...]

The United Nations Secretary-General on Friday condemned a decision by the Sudanese government to remove two senior UN officials from the country. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement which included remarks stating that the sanctioning of UN officials by the Sudanese government was “unacceptable.” UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Ali Al-Za’tari and UN Development Programme [...]

The High Court of Ireland on Friday ruled that a doctor can switch off the life support of a brain dead woman who is 18 weeks pregnant. The judgment made by the panel of judges challenges the Irish Constitution in regards to the separate rights between a mother and her unborn child. Responding to the [...]

Facebook failed in its attempt to dismiss a lawsuit that claims it scans users’ private messages for the names of websites and adds “likes” for the users to each website for targeted advertising purposes. The original lawsuit was filed in December 2013 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California . Judge [...]

North Carolina’s Attorney General (AG) Roy Cooper announced Friday that he plans to appeal a recent decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that struck down the state’s ultrasound abortion law, the Women’s Right to Know Act . The Fourth Circuit held that the law, which requires physicians to display and [...]

A bill (S.171) that has been pre-filed in the South Carolina Senate would make certain state colleges pay their student basketball and football players if the bill becomes law. The bill was proposed December 3 by Senator Marlon Kimpson , who argues that student athletes should be compensated when universities benefit financially from the use [...]

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled Friday to demolish a Jewish settlement at Amona in West Bank. The ruling resulted from a lawsuit brought decades ago by Palestinians who claimed to own the land to the settlement, which has been deemed “one of the oldest and most contentious Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank.” The court [...]