The Supreme Court of Afghanistan upheld a 20-year prison sentence for blasphemy against Afghani journalism student Sayad Parwaz Kambaksh in a secret February hearing, according to statements by his lawyer quoted in Thursday media reports. Kambaksh and his lawyer were unaware of the secret hearing , and were not given any opportunity to argue against [...]

Rep. Jennifer Coffey and Evan F. Nappen : "It's said that God created man and woman, but it took Sam Colt to make them equal. Domestic violence is deplorable. Abusing any person, whether man or woman, is wrong. The problem is when the issue of domestic violence is used to promote an anti-gun agenda to [...]

Paula Lucas : "Pull out your cup, fill it full of whatever morning sip of activation you need and let's talk. The recent comments made by Attorney General Holder were rough – well intentioned and certainly based more upon fact than figment of imagination, but it's kind of like using a sheet of sandpaper to [...]

A judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Thursday indefinitely froze the assets of financier Allen Stanford at the instance of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) . Stanford was charged last month with orchestrating a fraudulent $8 billion investment scheme by selling certificates of deposits on the [...]

The US Senate on Thursday confirmed David Ogden as the new Deputy Attorney General by a vote of 65-28 . In debate Wednesday, Republicans opposed to the nomination focused on Ogden's actions while serving in the private sector, where he defended groups who actively opposed anti-pornography and pre-abortion prenatal notification laws. Before the vote, Senator [...]

A Serbian war crimes court in Belgrade convicted 13 Serbs Thursday in connection with the 1991 killings of over 200 Croatian POWs at a pig farm outside the Croatian town of Vukovar . Eighteen Serbs were originally charged over the incident. Charges against two were later dropped. Fourteen of the men were found guilty of [...]

Members of the Pakistan lawyers' movement and opposition politicians and supporters began a "long march" from Karachi to Islamabad Thursday against the government of Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and his Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) . The protesters, led by Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) , faced continued raids and arrests from [...]

Chibli Mallat : "Yesterday we encountered a strange moment of serendipity. Dr. Lateef Rashid, invited those of us working on the Global Justice Project: Iraq to dinner with his colleague, the Minister of Justice, Dara Noureddin. Dr. Rashid, the Minister for Water, has one of the best reputations in Iraq for running his complex Ministry, [...]

Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford Thursday sentenced Ottawa software developer Mohammed Momin Khawaja to 10.5 years in prison for his involvement in an alleged terrorist plot to bomb targets in the UK. Khawaja was convicted in October 2008 of designing a remote detonator and providing other support to a group that was convicted in [...]

Officials from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) said Thursday that a ban on video-sharing website YouTube has been lifted, but did not comment on access to several other blocked websites that also posted a recording in which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is criticized by army officers over how she handled the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) [...]