In the US, officials are making some moves to rein in the National Security Agency (NSA) as the scandal of how the agency spied on foreign heads of state – including Germany’s Angela Merkel – continues to snowball. President Obama ordered the agency to curb its spying inside UN headquarters in New York, and The New York Times reports that Obama is also poised to order the NSA to stop eavesdropping on America’s allies.
This afternoon, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress, saying that the US didn’t “indiscriminately” spy on other nations, although “leadership intentions is kind of a basic tenet of what we collect and analyse."
The Syrian government’s apparent relaxation of a blockade allowed thousands of hungry civilians to flee an embattled Damascus suburb.
With Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki set to visit Washington on Friday, the US should make clear that it will not support Iraq’s assault on human rights.
For a brief moment today, there looked to be some respite to Saudi Arabia’s relentless crackdown against activists when it released blogger Hamza Kashgari from jail. But within hours, a court in Jeddah dispelled that notion as it issued a conviction against human rights lawyer Waleed Abu al-Khair.
Domestic workers in Indonesia do more than cook, clean and care for their employers’ families. Their labor is essential to Indonesia’s national economy, and yet the government is not protecting them.
