Often aided and inspired by social media, an increasing number of young Saudi women are taking enormous gambles to escape the country, rights groups say.

The Russian republic of Chechnya has launched a new crackdown on gays in which at least two people have died and about 40 people have been detained, LGBT activists in Russia charged Monday. The new allegations come after reports in 2017 of more than 100 gay men arrested and subjected to torture, and some of them killed, in the predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia.

Over the centuries, the harbour city of Gdansk was proud to be open for diversity, famous for its tolerance....Remembering this history lesson, I decided to take part in the Equality March, which took place on Saturday.

Iranian activist Reza Khandan, the husband of imprisoned human-rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, has been released from custody in Iran, his lawyer said in a post on Facebook on December 23. Lawyer Mohammad Moghimi wrote that following Khandan's release, both Sotoudeh and activist Farhad Meysami ended hunger strikes that were partially motivated by support for Khandan.

The mass detention of Uighur artists, journalists and scholars has become an alarming symbol of the Communist Party’s most intense social-engineering drive in decades.

State Department official Scott Busby told senators this week that China has detained at least 800,000 Muslim minorities in internment camps. 

Slavery still exists and it happens in plain sight.

A Saudi Arabian man who renounced Islam and made disparaging remarks about the prophet Muhammad has been sentenced to death. Authorities became aware of Ahmad Al-Shamri in 2014 after he uploaded a series of videos reflecting his views on social media. He was subsequently arrested on charges of atheism and blasphemy, faced trial and was sentenced to death in February 2015.

If we want to live in a democracy, we have to have universal suffrage. Period.

The Long Night of Ideas in Berlin took a look this year at growing threats to freedom of expression around the world. A talk at the Maxim Gorki Theater examined what Germany can do to help protect this human right.

A Sudanese court has commuted the death sentence for teenager Noura Hussein, who killed her husband after he raped her, in a case that has put a spotlight on forced child marriage and marital rape in the African nation. Her legal team told CNN on Tuesday that Hussein, now 19, has been given a five-year jail term for killing the 35-year-old man. The court ordered her family to pay 337,000 Sudanese pounds ($18,700) in "blood money" to the man's family.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia executed a man by crucifixion in the holy city of Mecca on Wednesday amid waging a public-relations battle with Canada over human rights. The man, Elias Abulkalaam Jamaleddeen, was accused of murder, theft, and attempted rape, according to Bloomberg. Saudi Arabia, ruled by its interpretation of Islamic law, rarely carries out crucifixions, but capital punishment remains common.

China’s campaign against its minority Uighur population is a campaign of ethnic cleansing justified by “war on terror” rhetoric.

In November 2017, a gunman entered a church in Sutherland Springs in Texas, where he killed 26 people and wounded 20 others. He escaped in his car, with police and residents in hot pursuit, before losing control of the vehicle and flipping it into a ditch. When the police got to the car, he was dead. The episode is horrifying enough without its unsettling epilogue. In the course of their investigations, the FBI reportedly pressed the gunman’s finger to the fingerprint-recognition feature on his iPhone in an attempt to unlock it.

The Thefreethoughts Twitter account and other Saudi sources said the female, named as Esra al-Ghamgam, was executed on the prosecutor’s orders on Sunday. It shared a video showing an executioner fixing her in a recumbent position on the ground before decapitating her with a sword as security forces stood by.

Around 1 million Uighurs have disappeared without trial. Worse may come.

I may be locked up in solitary confinement, but I stand with the men and women rejecting modern slavery in America

A special three-member bench of the Supreme Court on Monday reserved its judgement on the final appeal against the execution of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death for blasphemy. Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, Justice Asif Saeed Khosa and Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel were hearing Bibi's 2014 appeal against the capital punishment handed to her. While reserving its verdict on the appeal, the chief justice warned media against commenting on or discussing the case until the apex court's detailed judgement has been issued.

The founder of a global abortion-pill provider that has never shipped to the U.S. has quietly started a new service for Americans. By Olga Khazan.

Supplier under fire after vocational degrees were withheld unless students undertook factory work

Residents in Tanzania’s biggest city have been urged to inform on their neighbours and friends ahead of a police operation to hunt down and jail homosexuals.

Saudi Arabia must halt a “disturbing” rise in its use of the death penalty, Amnesty International said this evening after six people were executed in the country today.

The father of a Cub Scout sat his son on his lap late last week and told him news that tore up both their hearts: The family was leaving the Boy Scouts.

Geneva: A United Nations human rights watchdog has accused Israel’s police and military of abuses against Palestinian children ranging from torture to threats of death and sexual assault in prisons.

Thailand ranks next-to-worst in the State Department's "trafficking in persons" report.

The United Nations has called on the international community to strengthen efforts to combat human trafficking, saying 2.4 million people worldwide are victims of human trafficking at any one time.

Dozens of suspected people-traffickers have been arrested in Spain and France, suspected of smuggling Chinese migrants into Europe and US, police have said.

By Bernard Vaughan NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge ruled on Monday the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" crime-fighting tactic unconstitutional, dealing a stinging rebuke to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who vowed to appeal the ruling. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin called it "indirect racial profiling" because it targeted racially defined groups...

Asylum seekers have been banned from using a swimming pool, attending churches or reading in the library under a new Swiss policy that authorities say is intended to promote peaceful coexistence with local people.

My best friend at 9 was white - but interracial friendships later became a struggle. Here's why everything changed.

Two female Russian athletes kissed on the winners podium to protest Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law, reports Sky News. Kseniya Ryzhova and Tatyana Firova kissed after they helped their team win the 4 x 400 meter relay at the World Athletics Championship in Moscow on Saturday.

Ousted Hosni Mubarak is to be released from prison within 48 hours, his lawyer claims, as Egypt descends further into chaos.

Officials from the British intelligence agency GCHQ raided The Guardian's offices to destroy hard drives related to the newspaper's stories about National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden — despite the fact that the information had already been disseminated to other sites around the world.

New Jersey Republican Governor Chris Christie on Monday signed into law a measure to prevent therapists from counseling gay and lesbian youths to change their sexual orientation, making his the second U.S. state to ban so-called conversion therapy.

Russian legislators have said they will enforce new anti-gay laws during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, but the ancient athletic games started out as little more than a gigantic festival of homoerotic excess.