Saudi Women Defy Driving Ban

Five Saudi women who dared to break the driving ban by getting behind the wheel were arrested for a few hours and then released by the Kingdom's muttawas, or religious police, in the Red Sea coast city of Jeddah.
To gain their release, the women, along with their legal male guardians, had to sign a pledge declaring they would not drive again.
In what is being described as "dramatic" night time raids, police detained one of the women as she was driving in the city. She was reportedly surrounded by four police cars and taken into custody.
According to a conservative Saudi news website, her car was also confiscated. The other four were first accused of defying the ban and then arrested.
Galvanized by the recent revolutions in the Arab world, the organization Saudi Women for Driving, a coalition of leading Saudi women's rights activists, released a statement that read, "The Saudi police decided to wait a few weeks before cracking down in the hope that international attention on the ban on women driving would subside."
The law in the Kingdom does not actually prohibit women from driving but there are fatwas, or religious edicts, which follow Wahabism, a strict form of Islam that follows the Koran literally and has been in place for centuries. It is the muttawas who police the streets and enforce those edicts in the country.

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It is the first time the muttawas cracked down on women drivers since women's rights campaigner and single mother Manal Al Sharif was arrested for driving in May this year and remained behind bars for nice days. Al Sharif is one of five organizers who set up the facebook group "Women2Drive" page, launched a nationwide campaign calling on all women across the country to drive on June 17. Dozens of women across the country hit the streets, some documenting their audacious act and posting their videos on YouTube.
The Saudi women have been tirelessly trying to reverse these laws to enable women to drive so that they can have more freedom and no longer have to rely on their male guardians to commute.
Eman Al Nafjan, a Saudi women's rights blogger and college teacher, is one of them. She spoke of her frustration, telling ABC News, "Do you know how difficult it is for me? I am 32 years old, a mother of three, teaching college students, and I am trusted to teach but not trusted behind the wheel just because I don't have the right genitals?''
Al Nafjan is working on

Will Casey Anthony Testify?

"I wouldn't make any plans for Sunday or Monday," Perry told the attorneys.
The announcement about the trial's progression followed an emotional day of testimony by George Anthony where he dealt a blow to his daughter's defense by saying she was the last one to see Caylee alive and by offering details about his 2009 suicide attempt.
Who's Who in the Case Anthony Trial
The defense so far has used the testimony of others to try and bolster their theory that Caylee accidentally drowned in the family pool and that George Anthony, Casey Anthony's father, helped dispose of the body. They claim that the 25-year-old mom hid the death like she hid years of alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her father.
George Anthony adamantly denied those claims today and with a pained voice revealed details about a suicide attempt he made just weeks after learning that Caylee's remains had been discovered in a wooded area near the Anthony family home in Orlando, Fla.
"My emotional state even through today is very hard to accept that I don't have a granddaughter any more. But for that particular day [Jan. 22, 2009]…it just felt like the right time to go and be with Caylee," he said.

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He said that he attempted suicide with a mixture of medications and beer and described writing an eight page suicide note.
"I wrote this specific letter to my wife Cindy to tell her how I felt and how I didn't want to be in this world anymore," he said.
At another point, when the jury was out of the room, George Anthony said, "I needed to be with Caylee. I believed I had failed her."

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Raid against Haqqani stronghold leaves 50 dead in Afghanistan

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- A coalition operation against militants in southeastern Afghanistan has left at least 50 insurgents dead as Afghan and NATO forces swept through a "known Haqqani network" area.
The encampment was considered a staging ground for Haqqani and foreign fighters, NATO's International Security Assistance Force reported Friday.
The Haqqani network is an insurgent group loosely affiliated with the Taliban, and is believed to be based in Pakistan's lawless frontier territories. They operate along the porous Afghan-Pakistan border regions.
The group has been responsible for "several high-profile attacks against the Afghan government and its citizens," ISAF reported.
The coalition operation -- which included Afghan special forces -- engaged "multiple groups of insurgents," who were armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers and heavy machine guns.
The firefight took place against multiple insurgent groups, who were holed up in areas that included caves and fortified bunker positions, ISAF reported.

The operation spanned night-time hours as NATO airstrikes pummeled insurgent positions.