A prominent Egyptian blogger handed himself in to authorities on Tuesday, a day after the country’s prosecutor general ordered his arrest along with four others for allegedly instigating violence with comments posted on social media.

The charges stem from clashes between supporters and opponents of the country’s Islamist president last week that left 200 injured.

Activists say the accusations against blogger Alaa Abdel-Fattah may herald a wave of arrests of opposition leaders. They follow closely on …

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HARTMANN: The oligarchs are sucking dry America’s middle and working class, while the rest of us are being left to feed off of their crumbs.

Paul Buchheit, a professor of economic inequality at DePaul University, has written a brilliant piece, detailing just how large, and outrageous, the wealth gap between the oligarchs and the rest of America has become.

Let’s start off by looking at the …

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Not until Perry Gottesfeld pulled up to the front gates of Seigneurie in Cameroon did he realize the African country’s leading paint manufacturer was owned by a U.S.-based corporation.

“A big sign read PPG,” Gottesfeld, executive director of the nonprofit Occupational Knowledge International, recalled from his March 2011 visit to the factory. “We were shocked.”

The reason for the surprise: His research team had just discovered that more than 40 percent of Seigneurie house paints on the …

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Encrypted messaging services such as Skype, Viber and WhatsApp could be blocked in Saudi Arabia, the telecommunications regulator there is reported to have warned.

It is demanding a means to monitor such applications, but Saudis say that would seriously inhibit their communications.

Saudi newspapers are reporting that the companies behind the applications have been given a week to respond.

No explanation has been given of why the demand has been made.

Ahmed Omran, a Saudi blogger who runs the …

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In 2011, In These Times reported on the land grabs sweeping the Global South as wealthy investors look to cash in on rising food prices. Among those who stand to profit from such land grabs—which displace impoverished communities in Africa and Asia and threaten their access to affordable food and water—are a number of U.S. universities and the hedge funds that manage their endowments, including, until very recently, Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University.

Appalled by a 2011 report …

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Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed an indictment Wednesday charging Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun with six terrorism-related counts.

The announcement that Harun is in U.S. custody in New York may also shed light on a small part one of the most secretive aspects of U.S. counterterrorism operations during the Bush administration: What became of terror suspects held by the CIA in its network of “black-site” prisons around the world? Or disappeared into foreign cells in extraordinary …

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Twenty-five-year-old Manuel Diaz was hanging out in Anaheim on a sunny Saturday last July when two officers began to approach him. Diaz ran off, and Anaheim police officers Nick Bennallack and Brett Heitman pursued him. Moments later, Bennallack shot and killed Diaz—who was unarmed—on an apartment complex lawn. This week, the Orange County District Attorney’s office ruled that the shooting was justified.

Video taken immediately after the shooting is chilling. One bystander frustratingly screams out, “He’s …

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Two bills introduced Thursday in the House and Senate would compel law enforcement agents to obtain a warrant before affixing a GPS tracker to a vehicle, using a cell site simulator to locate someone through their mobile device or obtaining geolocation data from third-party service providers.

The comprehensive bills would also prohibit private investigators and other private individuals from using a GPS device to surreptitiously track someone’s location without their consent, thus closing a number of …

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WASHINGTON — On any given day, about 300 immigrants are held in solitary confinement at the 50 largest detention facilities that make up the sprawling patchwork of holding centers nationwide overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, according to new federal data.

Nearly half are isolated for 15 days or more, the point at which psychiatric experts say they are at risk for severe mental harm, with about 35 detainees kept for more than 75 …

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HONG KONG — Hong Kong’s highest court ruled unanimously Monday that a woman from the Philippines who had lived and worked here for nearly 27 years as a domestic helper was not entitled to permanent residency, ending an acrimonious legal fight over the immigration rights of migrant workers.

Public opinion surveys had shown that a large majority of Hong Kong citizens opposed granting permanent residency to the city’s domestic helpers, which would grant them the …

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