The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear three cases , including Arizona v. Gant (07-542) where the Court will consider whether "the Fourth Amendment require law enforcement officers to demonstrate a threat to their safety or a need to preserve evidence related to the crime of arrest in order to justify a warrantless [...]

The Afghan journalism student who was sentenced to death in January for distributing papers questioning gender roles under Islamic practice told the Independent on Sunday that he was not afforded a lawyer to represent him during his four-minute closed court trial, and that he was not permitted to speak on his own behalf. Sayad Parwez [...]

Khalid Sekander : "An Afghan university journalism student was recently convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to death by an Afghan trial court for expressing the idea that polygamy may be an inappropriate practice under Islam. The sentence is on appeal, and, meanwhile a majority of the members of the upper house of the Afghan parliament [...]

The Cuban National Assembly on Sunday, by a unanimous show of hands, officially voted Raul Castro , 76, to the position of president, and also chose Jose Ramon Machado Ventura , 76, as the first vice president. Ventura is known as a hard-line supporter of former President Fidel Castro, who resigned last Tuesday, and was [...]

Chief Justice Ronald George of the California Supreme Court told the state's Judiciary Council on Friday that the Supreme Court is withdrawing a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at expediting death penalty appeals by allowing the Supreme Court to transfer death penalty appeals to the intermediate appellate courts, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. George had [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Larry Eaker of the American University of Paris says that EU law on the free movement of capital may significantly complicate the efforts of the French government to keep Societe Generale in French hands in the wake of the recent "rogue trader" episode that cost it billions in assets… "Société Générale is [...]

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has ordered the country's 70 Internet service providers to block access to popular video-sharing website YouTube because of "blasphemous content, videos and documents" posted on the site, a government official confirmed Sunday. The order, issued by the director of the PTA on Friday, claimed the ratio of "non-Islamic objectionable video" [...]

The UK Home Office said Saturday that the government has no plans to create a compulsory DNA database for British citizens, citing ethical and information security concerns. The country's more limited existing National DNA Database , which retains DNA information collected from criminal suspects upon arrest, has already been criticized by rights groups for retaining [...]

Protests broke out in two Indonesian cities Saturday over the reprinting of a cartoon depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Poste . Protesters in the world's most populous Muslim country burned Danish flags and called for the death of the cartoon artist. The demonstrations in Indonesia follow similar protests earlier this [...]

Serbia's chief prosecutor Slobodan Radovanovic said Saturday that Serbia is actively searching for the rioters that set fire to the US Embassy in Belgrade last week over US support of independence for Kosovo . Serbian police said they have already arrested over 200 rioters and are in the process of collecting evidence and filing charges. [...]