On January 28th, the terrorist convicted (and later acquitted) of the 2002 abduction and beheading of Daniel Pearl, was ordered to be released by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. The court also dismissed an appeal of the killer’s, Ahmad Saeed Omar Sheikh, acquittal filed by Pearl’s family and the Pakistani government.
Ultra-Orthodox demonstrators clashed with police in two of Israel’s major cities. Enforcing coronavirus restrictions in these religious neighborhoods has brought great challenges for local authorities.
A 13-year-old Nigerian sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for blasphemy is finally free as he wins his appeal in Kano state.
In August 2020, Omar Farouq was convicted in a Sharia court in Kano State of northwestern Nigeria, after being accused of using foul language about Allah while arguing with a friend.
Though only 13 years old, Farouq was tried as an adult because he has attained puberty and has full responsibility under Islamic law.
In a July 2020 interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Adrian Zenz, a German academic, explained how his opinion of the Communist Party of China’s actions in the Xinjiang region of Western China have changed. He once argued that China's actions are a "cultural genocide" as opposed to a literal one. But since recent developments regarding the suppression of birth rates among minorities of Xinjiang, Zenz now says that "we do need to probably call it genocide."
The state-run body (Diyanet) claims the tradition of wearing an eye-shaped blue amulet, the ‘evil-eye’ — which is believed to have originated from as far back as 3,300 BCE — is incompatible with Islam and prohibited. This tradition has become widely adopted in Turkey.
"Although the nature and condition of the evil eye are unknown, it is accepted by religion that some people can create negative effects with their gaze," according to the advisory published by Diyanet on the internet.
India’s Crime Inspection Department (CID) apprehended a man enticed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to leak sensitive information with nude photos of women and seductive conversations with them, India Today reported. He added that his greed for more pornography led him to reveal secret military information.
The West Valley City public charter school is under investigation by The Utah State Charter School Board for its lack of diversity and spending irregularities.
FOX 13 News reported that Vanguard Academy has ties to the Kingston group, a known polygamous sect of Mormonism in Utah. Within the past five years, Vanguard Academy has enrolled only one non-white student. The school also spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on companies related to the Kingston family, according to public records.
Accused of criticizing the royal family, authorities sentenced a Thai woman to 43 years in prison, the harshest sentence ever for insulting the monarchy in this country.
The former Houston megachurch pastor, Kirbyjon Caldwell, was once a spiritual adviser to presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The pastor was a frequent visitor to the White House during the George W. Bush administration and even officiated Jenna Bush's wedding.
In Louisiana, authorities sentenced Caldwell to six years in federal prison for defrauding more than two dozen people out of millions of dollars by selling worthless Chinese bonds.
Three female Polish activists are on trial, facing two years in prison for offending religious feelings. They created an image of the Virgin Mary, Poland's sacred icon, wearing a rainbow halo.
The indictment follows an incident in April 2019, when posters and stickers bearing a rainbow-haloed version of the Black Madonna appeared near a church in Płock, a city in central Poland.The doctored image traded the golden halos around the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus with representations of a rainbow flag, a common symbol of the LGBT community.
