U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl in New York Oct. 25 upheld activist attorney Lynne Stewart's conviction on terrorist conspiracy charges, finding that allegations by her lawyers were unfounded that a juror on the case feared for her life and was coerced. Koeltl denied Stewart's request for a new trial or a hearing to investigate charges that jurors were either intimidated or prejudiced against Stewart to begin with.

The Epoch Times, an international publication run by Chinese exiles harshly opposed to the People's Republic government, ran a synopsis Oct. 15 of its ongoing coverage of the rural conflict in Taishi, a village in Guangdong now occupied by police following protests against municipal corruption. This story says much about current political dynamics in the People's Republic of China, but it is slightly ironic that Epoch Times insists on casting it in anti-Communist rhetoric. The facts make abundantly clear that China's current rulers are now Communist in name only—the underlying conflict here concerns the privatization of village agricultural lands for the garish real-estate developments of the burgeoning nouveau riche elite.

The persistently irritating John Tierney has done it again. In a typically smarmy column in the Oct. 25 New York Times, "And Your Point Is?", he dismisses the Plame affair as a bunch of empty hot air, asserting that "no one deserves to go to jail for leaking information to reporters without criminal intent." He also concludes: "No one deserves to be indicted on conspiracy charges for belonging to a group that believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Foreign policy mistakes are not against the law."

Sanjar Umarov, a prominent opposition leader in Uzbekistan, was arrested Oct. 22 on embezzlement charges, and is being held incommunicado. Members of his group, Sunshine Uzbekistan say they still do not know the exact whereabouts of their leader. The group, which is calling for free market reforms in the authoritarian Central Asian republic, says the charges are fabricated. The offices of the opposition group were searched by dozens of plainclothes police the same day as the arrest, and a large number of documents were taken away. Two other members of the group have also been arrested.

Baz Mohammad, a reputed Afghan drug kingpin who allegedly condoned selling heroin in the US in the name of jihad, has become the first person to be extradited from Afghanistan for prosecution. Upon his arraignment in Manhattan Oct. 24, Mohammad told US District Judge Denny Chin, "I am innocent." He was ordered held without bail.

Riot police dispersed an opposition rally in Azerbaijan's capital Oct. 23, beating and detaining protesters who defied an official ban on downtown demonstrations two weeks before parliamentary elections. Opposition groups say the government will try to rig the Nov. 6 vote and have been holding rallies nearly every weekend, clashing with police.

Freedom's on the march in Afghanistan—the freedom of fundamentalist fanatics to protect their faith from such blasphemous assaults as newspapers that condemn public stoning. From Reporters Without Borders, Oct. 24:

Reporters Without Borders today called on President Hamid Karzai to intercede after a Kabul court sentenced Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of the monthly publication Haqoq-e-Zan (Women's Rights), to two years in prison at the end of a summary trial on blasphemy charges on 22 October.

The Iraqi Bar Association has officially urged lawyers to suspend cooperation with the special court hearing the case against Saddam Hussein until the murder of a member of the defense team is solved. The association also passed a resolution calling a one-day strike for Oct. 26 to protest the killing of Saadoun Janabi, who was bundled out of his Baghdad office Oct. 20 by heavily-armed men and later found dumped on a roadside, dead of gunshot wounds.