Loyalist militant Michael Stone was charged Saturday with 5 counts of attempted murder after he threw a package of explosives into the entrance of the Stormont parliament buildings in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Friday and attempted to force his way past security guards. The recently-reconstituted Northern Ireland Assembly was in session at the time, meeting [...]

A Yemeni court has convicted Kamal al-Aalafi, editor-in-chief of the al-Rai al-Aam newspaper, and sentenced him to one year in jail for violating Article 103 of the Press and Publications Law of 1990 as punishment for publishing offensive cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad . The weekly paper has additionally been closed for six months. Earlier [...]

A scheduled Saturday meeting of the Lebanese cabinet on the establishment of an international tribunal to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri has thrown Lebanon into crisis again even before it has taken place. Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called the meeting after pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud rejected [...]

The New York Times asked the US Supreme Court Friday to block a federal investigation into a terrorism probe leak from acquiring the telephone records of two Times reporters until the high court rules on a certiorari petition in the case. A Chicago grand jury is seeking to identify the sources that leaked information of [...]

Officials with the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) said Saturday that a meeting of the tribunal's judges convened to consider Draft Internal Rules for pending genocide trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders had failed to reach agreement on the regulations and that further meetings would be necessary. The rules cover every phase [...]

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney Friday filed a request with the state's Supreme Judicial Court to put a measure effectively banning same-sex marriage on the 2008 Massachusetts ballot if legislators fail to vote on the issue before the end of their term on January 2. Romney took the anticipated action after state lawmakers voted 109-87 to [...]

The UN Committee against Torture (CAT) urged Russia Friday to investigate and prosecute what it called the "widespread use of torture" in Chechnya . The human rights body cited "reliable reports" of the existence of secret detention facilities where "detainees faced torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." CAT also expressed its concern that "numerous, [...]

The International Bar Association (IBA) , the leading global organization of legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies, announced Friday that it has canceled a training program for Cambodian lawyers representing defendants in the genocide trial of Khmer Rouge leaders. The program had faced opposition from the Cambodian Bar Association, which saw the program as [...]

Hartmut Nassauer , German head of a European Parliament delegation visiting Indonesia, said Friday that adopting Sharia law would negatively affect Indonesia's relations with other states. Nassaeur emphasized that Islamic law should not affect Indonesia's legal code, stating that the liberty of faith "includes the right to live without faith and consequently have to obey [...]

Two Turkish Christians have gone on trial for their alleged "public denigration of the Turkish identity." Hakan Tastan, 37, and Turan Topal, 46, allegedly made insults against Turkey while attempting to convert other Turks to Christianity. The two defendants are being charged under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code, which makes insulting "Turkishness" a crime. [...]