Globe Trot: Judge questions suspects in Indian gang rape trial

A verdict is expected soon in the cases of four teenagers accused in last December’s gang rape that killed a woman on a bus in Delhi. The four are in court today, giving statements and answering the judge’s queries ahead of verdicts that could include the death penalty.

The U.S. military has completed a $34 million headquarters facility near Kandahar in Afghanistan—with no plans to ever use it.

Edward Snowden has yet to formally take Venezuela up on its offer of asylum. U.S. officials believe he is marooned in the transit zone of Moscow’s international airport, and with his U.S. passport revoked, his options for remaining free are dwindling.

Near Aleppo, Syrians have taken to the streets to protest Islamist groups who control the area. Could this be the start of a “Cairo effect” on Arab Spring revolutions that have opened the door for Islamic radicals?

Asian media headlines continue to be dominated by Pakistan’s 336-page Abbottabad Commission Report, released by Al Jazeera on Monday. The document focuses on how Pakistan failed to detect and respond to the 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Pakistan’s Parliament—angered by the 90-minute incursion into its airspace as the Navy SEALs flew in aboard helicopters, raided the compound, and killed the al Qaeda leader and others—commissioned the high-level report. It criticizes the regime’s “military hegemony” and recommends that the country’s security and intelligence agencies be further subject to political leaders. But the report also is full of juicy details about bin Laden’s life in Pakistani exile—among them, bin Laden once disguised himself as then President George W. Bush, wearing a cowboy hat.

Is it any wonder other nations scoff at the idea of adopting liberal democracy when we treat ours so shabbily? Bill Frezza comments:

“The only reason why this planet can support 7 billion souls is that most are being fed, clothed, and housed by vast engines of commerce developed by market-centric economies fueled by free enterprise, sustained by the rule of law, and rescued from both fascist and communist tyranny by the might and the example of the United States. If we abandon that which made us great and collapse under an orgy of self-inflicted mismanagement, it is just a matter of time before everyone else goes down with us.

“All of humanity is watching, for if a nation comprised of the world's most determined immigrants, raised in a melting pot unencumbered by Old World hatreds, and blessed with the most brilliant Constitution ever conceived cannot figure out how to effectively govern itself, who can?”