Egypt’s interim government, the Cabinet of Ministers decided at Thursday’s meeting to begin measures to end Egypt’s state of emergency that has been in effect for nearly 30 years. The Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces announced in March that it would lift the state of emergency, but until now, nothing else had been [...]

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday requested that a certified question be answered by the Alabama Supreme Court before the legal battle over the state’s controversial immigration law commences in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama . The plaintiffs filed a motion with District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn asking to [...]

A representative for the UN Mission in the Ivory Coast (MINUCI) confirmed that forces loyal to President Alassane Ouattara are continuing to kill civilians and opposition members in his name, with 26 killings reported between July 11 and August 10. There were also 85 arbitrary detentions by members of the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast [...]

Amnesty International (AI) called Wednesday for justice system reform in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) . The report states that the justice system has allowed the Congolese army and other armed groups to engage in a “cycle of violence and human rights violations for decades,” alleging that the groups have engaged in torture, sexual [...]

A class action lawsuit filed Tuesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California alleges that Apple and five major publishers colluded to illegally fix electronic book (e-book) prices. The complaint alleges that Apple and publishing companies, including HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster, conspired to increase e-book [...]

Pakistan extradited Umar Patek, the confessed bomb maker in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing , to Indonesia on Thursday. Patek will be charged under the Indonesian criminal code rather than its terrorism laws. Reportedly, he will be charged with premeditated murder under the Emergency Law on Explosives. It is also alleged that Patek is in [...]

A Pennsylvania judge was sentenced Wednesday to 28 years in prison for his participation in a juvenile sentencing scandal . Mark Ciavarella Jr., a former judge in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas , was accused of receiving nearly $1 million in kickbacks for sentencing teenagers to two private juvenile detention facilities in which [...]

The state of Arizona on Wednesday filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the US Supreme Court seeking to overturn a lower court decision enjoining four provisions of Arizona’s controversial immigration law . The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld an injunction in April before the law ever took effect, and [...]

A Vietnam court sentenced blogger and professor Pham Minh Hoang , alias Phan Kien Quoc, to three years in prison Wednesday for anti-government articles, accusing him of “attempted subversion.” Hoang reportedly joined the pro-democracy group Viet Tan , which is banned in Vietnam as a terrorist organization, and began to write anti-communist articles on the [...]

The son of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo , Michel Gbagbo, and 12 other Gbagbo allies were charged Wednesday with committing acts of post-election violence . The 13 men are charged with armed insurrection and undermining the nation. Although Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara has insisted that all those responsible for war crimes will [...]