An alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Adel al-Jubeir , Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the US, may violate the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, including Diplomatic Agents , which Iran signed in 1978. The US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that it had foiled the plot . [...]

A coalition of civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday to block South Carolina’s recently passed immigration law . Brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and other civil rights groups, the class action suit claims the new legislation is unconstitutional, inviting racial profiling and interfering with [...]

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced Wednesday that Sudan will adopt an Islamic constitution. The creation of an Islamic state, three months after the official split between Sudan and South Sudan , is intended to more accurately reflect the religious affiliation of its population, which is 98 percent Muslim now that the mainly Christian South Sudan [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases on Wednesday. In Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of County of Burlington , the court considered whether a suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated when he was strip searched twice after being arrested for a non-criminal offense and the circumstances did not suggest that [...]

Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to all counts of a criminal indictment charging him for his role in the attempted Christmas Day 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. Abdulmutallab, 24, admitted to eight felonies , including [...]

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange on Tuesday submitted a filing in the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit asking the court not to stay the state’s controversial immigration law . The filing was in response to a motion filed last week by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) , which requested that the [...]

Florida submitted a request to the US District Court for the District of Columbia Tuesday seeking declaratory judgments regarding recently-enacted changes to the state’s Election Code , four sections of which require Section 5 “preclearance” under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) . Relying heavily on patterns of past discrimination to determine which state, [...]

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior Affairs and the National Directorate of Security (NDS) on Tuesday denied prisoner torture allegations made earlier this week in a UN report. A spokesperson for the Ministry said at a press conference that there was no basis for the report’s findings and that publicizing such information could hurt the people’s trust [...]

Rights groups urged the UN Tuesday to assure that Cambodia will not interfere in a tribunal established by the UN charged with investigating the communist Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s. The pressure for UN action results from the resignation of Siegfried Blunk , one of the judges for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts [...]

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on Tuesday enacted an antitrust law, provisions of which further his conflict with the country’s news media. The new law specifically bars news media owners and bankers from holding financial stakes in other industries and generally bars companies from establishing a monopoly in any industry. The law provides until July 2012 [...]