The head of Saudi Arabia’s religious police has said anyone who uses Twitter “has lost this world and his afterlife.”  Previously, the government-appointed imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca denounced Twitter as a “threat to national unity.” You might think that social media are no match for police and petrodollars , but King Abdullah—who’s seen the Internet facilitate democratic uprisings in nearby countries—views Twitter and other platforms as a threat to his power, and with good reason. Saudi Arabia has more Twitter users per capita than any other country in the world. Between 2011 and 2012, the number of Twitter users in the Kingdom grew by 3,000 percent, with users posting an average of 50 million messages monthly, most of them in Arabic .

16-Year-Old Kiera Wilmot Was Arrested and Expelled Following a Science Experiment at Bartow High School May 22, 2013 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: 212-549-2666, media@aclu.org MIAMI – Today, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida sent a letter to Dr. John A. Stewart, Interim Superintendent of Polk County Public Schools, calling on him to allow Kiera Wilmot to return to Bartow High School for the remainder of the school year.

There is a contradiction at the heart of conservatism, says Grant Wyeth , and it’s that capitalism in modern times is, by its very nature, rapidly changing and evolving. ON FRIDAY LAST WEEK in The Age , Waleed Aly wrote a thoughtful piece on the tensions that currently exist globally within “the Right” of politics

A Wisconsin dairy farmer is set to go on trial for a strange offense: selling raw milk to a group of consumers who were members of a private buyers club. So in many parts of America, its basically legal to grow, sell, and smoke pot. But you can go to jail for selling people fresh milk

Image via Yelp On May 3rd, a 36-year-old Iraq war veteran and college student named Maribel Ramos (pictured above right) was reported missing by her family, after failing to turn up to several events in Santa Ana, California.  A couple of days later, a friend of Maribel’s named Emily C started a Yelp  thread called “My friend Maribel Ramos is missing!!” in an effort to track her down.  Somebody posted asking if Maribel’s roommate had been questioned by police yet.  This is where the roommate, KC Joy (who is pictured at the very top of this post with Maribel), joined the conversation. Posting that Maribel was his BFF, and giving details of the police’s search of the apartment they shared.  Then a user called Grant K joined the thread, pointing out that it was suuuuuuuuuper suspicious that KC was referring to Maribel in the past tense.  Some other users weren’t too happy with what Grant was implying, and told him off

 Jammu/ Kashmir: Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA) removal would not replace dearth of water and electricity in Jammu. Instead of parroting about removal of much needed law and poking nose in international politics, which stands exclusively the jurisdiction of Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

Marchers in a conga line ended four days of activities against homophobia in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Cuba has won advances on issues like the change of name of pre-operative transgender persons, while they continue to fight for the right to same-sex civil unions. For the first time since 1997, a transsexual woman who had not undergone sex-change surgery was issued a photo ID card this year reflecting her chosen name and gender identity, Manuel Vázquez, a lawyer with the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), a government-funded body, told IPS

[iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pfTh6vIQBVg?feature=oembed" width="425" height="239" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen] On October 1st, 25 million uninsured Americans will be able to sign up for health insurance through new health insurance marketplaces. Don’t be fooled by extremist members of Congress and their pointless efforts to repeal the healthcare law. Obamacare is the law of the land and on October 1st of this year, 25 million uninsured Americans will be able to enroll in health insurance plans through the newly created health insurance marketplaces

Fox News Sunday selected Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova, attorneys who represented witnesses at a Republican-led hearing on the attacks at a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, for its “power players of the week,” an unfortunate choice given that both individuals misled Fox News and its viewers about allegations of threats and intimidation against their clients and about efforts by the administration to prevent their clients from testifying

The disease itself may not discriminate on the basis of gender, but when it comes to healthcare for patients with diabetes, women in India find themselves at a disadvantage compared to men. This was the conclusion of the study, ‘Impact of Gender on Care of Type 2 Diabetes in Varkala, Kerala’, which analysed gender roles, norms and values in a household and found women patients to be more vulnerable. Women in India face disadvantages when it comes to diabetes.