Afzal Guru , a Kashmiri militant who received the death penalty for participating in the 2001 attack on India’s parliament , was executed on Saturday. Guru was hanged after India’s president, Shri Pranab Mukherjee , turned down his plea for clemency. Following Guru’s execution, India’s government imposed a curfew in the India-controlled section of Kashmir [...]

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Egypt’s administrative court ordered the country’s National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA) on Friday to block YouTube because it carried the controversial amateur film Innocence of Muslims . The amateur film sparked violent protests in the Middle East last year for portraying the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud and a womanizer. The court declared that YouTube [...]

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The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday that a settlement has been reached with Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC, known by the public as Macmillan , over allegations that the publishing company conspired with Apple to raise the retail price of e-books. The DOJ’s Antitrust Division reached agreements previously with Hachette Book Group Inc., HarperCollins Publishers [...]

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The Congress of the Philippines on Wednesday passed a bill to protect the rights of more than one million internally displaced persons (IDPs). The bill was praised by the UN Refugee Agency on Friday. If the bill is signed into law, the Philippines will become the first country in the Asia-Pacific region to have legislation [...]

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The Arkansas Senate on Thursday approved revisions to the state’s lethal injection law. The Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the 2009 version of the law last year, finding that a provision allowing the state department of corrections to choose the drug for lethal injection violates the separation of powers in the Arkansas constitution . Since [...]

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Senegal’s newly-created Extraordinary African Chambers officially opened on Friday to prepare for the prosecution of former Chadian dictator Hissene Habre . Senegal’s national assembly adopted a law in December allowing for the creation of the special tribunal with the support of the African Union (AU) and financial assistance from the European Union and the US [...]

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An appeals court judge in Haiti on Thursday ordered former president Jean-Claude Duvalier to face charges of abusing human rights. Duvalier returned to Haiti in 2011 after 25 years in exile, prompting an investigation for crimes he committed from 1971-1986. Last January a magistrate judge dismissed human rights charges against Duvalier , including allegations of [...]

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US District Judge James Robart on Thursday restricted the patent lawsuit by Google subsidiary Motorola Mobility against Microsoft . The judge ruled that certain parts of three different Motorola patents were not valid. Motorola has sought $4 billion for alleged violations of its wireless and video patents by Microsoft. Microsoft maintains that Motorola is only [...]

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