SEOUL—North Korea recently executed its defense chief and three other high-ranking officials, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. If confirmed, the executions would be the latest in a series of purges in Pyongyang that raise concerns about the stability of the Kim Jong Un regime. In a closed-door door parliamentary committee meeting Wednesday, South […]
The two leaders of the Bali Nine, who were convicted and sentenced to death in 2006, faced a firing squad shortly after midnight on the penitentiary island of Nusakambangan in Java. Two Australians, Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31, joined six other drug offenders in front of a 12-man firing squad in a jungle […]
Jordan’s King Abdullah vowed a “relentless” war against Islamic State militants on their own territory on Wednesday. Abdullah’s remarks came a few hours after Jordan executed two militants at dawn Wednesday, responding to the Islamic State group’s gruesome killing of a Jordanian pilot captured after his plane went down during a mission targeting the fighters […]
WASHINGTON—Dozens of governments around the world, most notably in majority-Muslim nations, are turning to anti-blasphemy laws to aggressively punish alleged transgressions, especially against Islam. And while in the past blasphemy charges were most often brought against people for something they said in public, these days governments are turning their attention to what people say and […]