The founder of Russia’s most popular social network site says he has been fired and that allies of President Putin have taken over his site. Pavel Durov who ran VKontakte had previously announced he was leaving the company but said he had withdrawn his resignation. The company denied it had been withdrawn. Mr Durov had previously refused requests from the Russian government to censor posts on his site. In a […]
ISLAMABAD — Most didn’t notice the new library at this Islamic seminary for girls near Pakistan’s capital, until locals saw the paper sign in Urdu posted on its wooden door: “Library of Osama bin Laden, the Martyr.” Cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, a radical preacher who runs the Jamia Hafsa madrassa, wanted to honor the memory of the al-Qaida leader, killed in a May 2011 raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on […]
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Attorney James Connell has visited his client inside the secret Guantanamo prison complex known as Camp 7 only once, taken in a van with covered windows on a circuitous trek to disguise the route on the scrub brush-and-cactus covered military base. Connell is allowed to say virtually nothing about what he saw in the secret camp where the most notorious terror suspects in […]
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Pakistani judge dismissed an attempted murder case Saturday that police lodged against a 9-month-old boy, ending a bizarre case that drew new criticism to the country’s troubled criminal justice system. The family of toddler Mohammad Musa had kept the boy in hiding after authorities pressed charges accusing him of trying to kill police officers after a neighborhood brawl in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore. Judge Rafaqat […]
omb. The next morning, they detonated it as three rebel explosive experts and four assistants met inside, turning the villa to rubble in seconds. The operation late last month in Syria’s western Qalamoun region was carried out by fighters from Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group, several Lebanese officials close to the militants have told The Associated Press. The Shiite group has sent hundreds of its fighters into Syria to shore up […]
“You get down to survival mode.” That was blogger Roger Shuler’s state of mind after being arrested and hauled off to jail for writing about a politically connected Alabama lawyer. “Once you’re arrested I mean there’s not much you can do,” he told ThinkProgress in a conversation after his release, explaining that he felt powerless to handle the legal defense of his case. “Your hands are tied literally and figuratively […]
Muhammad Qutb, the brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood Sayyid Qutb, has passed away in hospital in Mecca at the age of 95. A Muslim scholar in his own right, Muhammad Qutb was born in the Upper Egyptian village of Musha near Asyut in 1919. He was arrested alongside his elder brother Sayyid in 1965 when they were accused of plotting to overthrow the secular regime. Although his […]
A mixture of sadness and hope was felt among many Qataris as rumours that the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, had decided to hand over power to his 33-year-old son, came true. On Monday, the country’s leader – who has ruled for the past 18 years – announced that his heir apparent, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, would be taking over. A formal address to the nation is […]
Alma Abdulrahman is lying gaunt and unable to move anything below her diaphragm in a hospital bed in Amman. Some bedsores have become so deep she’s having surgery tomorrow. Screws hold together her upper vertebrae, and cigarette burns pock her right shoulder. Her voice fades in and out, hoarse from either weakness or morphine. Six months earlier, she was paralyzed when a regime soldier struck her in the neck with […]
Kolkatta: One year and four months after she was raped and came to be known as the “Park Street rape survivor,” the woman has come forward and revealed her name and identity. Suzette Jordan is 38-year-old single mother of two girls and caregiver of her ailing mother as well. It is an unusually brave decision. Rape survivors usually don’t want to reveal their identity fearing “Why should I hide my […]
