Najam Sethi is no stranger to official harassment and death threats. Since the 1970s, the prominent Pakistani journalist has been charged with treason three times. He has been held incommunicado and even tortured. In more recent years, his name has appeared on a series of hit lists drawn up by militants enraged by his outspoken opposition to religious militancy. For the past two years, Sethi and his family have been forced to live under police protection. The hostile ...

Kansas' efforts to shut down two abortion providers will have to wait as a federal judge temporarily blocked the state Friday from imposing tough new licensing restrictions. U.S. District Judge Carlos Murguia, reading from the bench, issued a preliminary injunction, saying providers and women would suffer "irreparable" injury if the regulations took effect Friday as scheduled. The injunction will hold until a trial determines the legality over rules that, among other things, mandate the size of janitors' closets ...

Can the U.N. play a proactive role in the economic crisis we are witnessing right now? Sekari Vaidy SUNNYVALE, CALIF. The goal of the U.N. is to promote harmonious development throughout the world. We welcome industrialized countries' stimulus packages, but at the same time they should never lose sight of the plight of billions of other people, the poorest of the poor. What can individuals do to halt the global climate crisis? Carl Sack, VANCOUVER Climate change is the defining ...

Muammar Gaddafi remains hunkered down in Tripoli, ever defiant despite the the heaviest bombing of NATO's three-month campaign. But outside Libya, the talk has moved on from war to the business opportunities offered by a post-Gaddafi Libya. It's hard to envision a booming Libyan economy with its communication infrastructure shattered by bombs and its oil fields abandoned and idle. Yet economists and investors say that as an intensifying NATO campaign brings Gaddafi's 42-year rule closer to its end, ...

It wasn't easy for Bill Thielker to believe it when his doctor diagnosed him as depressed--mostly because he wasn't terribly sad. The 54-year-old landscape photographer and graphic designer felt lousy, all right--empty, unmotivated, detached from the people around him. But that was more or less how he'd always felt. "It was normal for me," he says. "I didn't realize anything was wrong. I just assumed life sucks and that's that." If Thielker was depressed and didn't know it, he was ...

Mark Villanella, born in New Jersey, cannot run for President in his adopted home of Peru, but he just might be the hottest property in the final weeks of Peru's hard-fought presidential campaign. Villanella, 35, is married to Peruvian Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori, who is ahead in the polls two weeks before the June 5 votes. With her lead at 3 to 5 points over the leftist Ollanta Humala in most surveys, Villanella's chances of becoming the first ...

There was more bad news on Sunday for a Pakistani military already reeling from the fallout of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden: suspected Islamist militants launched a brazen large-scale attack on a Pakistani naval base in the southern port city of Karachi. As many as 15 fighters carrying guns, grenades and rocket-propelled grenades stormed into the Pakistan naval station Mehran on Sunday in the most dramatic attack in years on a Pakistani military ...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama made two shocking breaches of foreign policy establishment etiquette. The first was to suggest if the U.S. had actionable intelligence that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, Obama, as President, would commit U.S. force to kill bin Laden. This statement of utter common sense was denounced by Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries. "He basically threatened to bomb Pakistan, which I don't think was a particularly wise position to ...

With the announcement of national elections on July 3, Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has placed his fate in the hands of the voters, and put the country's developing democracy to what may prove to be a perilous test. At 8 a.m. Tuesday morning, parliament was officially dissolved after 30 months under Abhisit which were marked by bloody protests, economic crisis and deepening social and political polarization. The elections will be Thailand's second since a bloodless military ...

Technically, it was an act of treason. Britain's Treason Felony Act of 1848 forbids subjects of the queen from calling for the abolition of the monarchy. The law is no longer enforced, which is good news for the several dozen Brits in central London on Friday who placed a Queen Elizabeth II impersonator in the gallows with a sign on her head saying "Best Before: Circa 1700." The mock imprisonment was part of the "Not the Royal Wedding Street Party" hosted by ...