Life for pregnant Briton in Laos trial

A pregnant British woman accused of smuggling heroin into Laos was sentenced to life in prison, the British Foreign Office said Wednesday. Samantha Orobator, 20, was jailed last August at the airport in the Lao capital, Vientiane, and charged with carrying about half a kilogram of heroin. She is more than five months pregnant, and enters her third trimester on Saturday

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Pregnant Briton to escape death penalty in Laos

A British woman facing possible execution in Laos will escape the death sentence because she is pregnant, a spokesman for the Laotian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. The country’s criminal law prohibits courts from sentencing pregnant women to death, spokesman Khenthong Nuanthasing told CNN. The woman’s trial hasn’t been scheduled yet, he said, but is likely to happen next week.

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Dealing with Hamas: Can the U.S. Avoid It Much Longer?

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to “work tirelessly with you for peace in the Middle East.” But Britain clearly has some ideas of its own about how to move the process forward, and those ideas clash with the orthodoxies still in place in Washington. Even as Brown spoke on Capitol Hill, his government announced that it has scrapped its boycott of Hizballah, and would hold talks with the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi’ite movement, whose militia is on its — and Washington’s — list of terrorist organizations.

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U.S. calls for conference on Afghanistan

The United States is calling for a conference on Afghanistan and the broader regional challenge to take place March 31, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Thursday. Clinton made the announcement in her first address as secretary of state to the North Atlantic Council at NATO.

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