A gender justice group took African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema to the Johannesburg Equality Court after he made the comment to students in January 2009. Jacob Zuma was acquitted of rape in 2006 after he insisted the sex was consensual and went on to become president last year.

Just hours after the conviction, a court official sent a second round of hate-speech complaints to Malema. These complaints address Malema's decision last week to lead college students in singing a song that calls for the killing of white South African farmers.

The judge who convicted Malema ordered him to make an unconditional public apology within two weeks and pay 50,000 rand ($6,700) to a center for abused women, called People Opposing Women Abuse, within a month, South African media reported.

"Instead of perpetuating rape myths, public figures should make it clear that rape can happen anywhere ... We need to make sure that women who have been raped are not stigmatized and are not made to feel like the crimes against them were their fault," said Mbuyiselo Botha, spokesperson for the Sonke Gender Justice group that took Malema to court.

Malema was not present in court to hear Monday's judgment. Malema's lawyer said his client will appeal soon.

Self-exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has won his libel case against a Kremlin-owned broadcaster that aired allegations he masterminded the murder of a former KGB agent in London.

The 64-year-old tycoon's victory against All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting is the latest round in the oligarch's battle against the Kremlin, which has long sought to bring him before a Russian court.

Berezovsky sued after the broadcaster, known by its acronym RTR, aired a show in which it was suggested he was behind the poisoning death of renegade Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006.

In the ruling at London's High Court, Justice David Eady awarded Berezovsky 150,000 pounds (about $225,000) in damages, saying: "There is no evidence before me that Mr. Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr. Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it."

Berezovsky, who was in court for the verdict, said in a statement he was pleased the court "has unequivocally demolished RTR's claims."

RTR, which did not take part in the hearings, called the judgment illegal. Speaking from Moscow, the broadcaster's lawyer Zoya Matviyevskaya said the company "does not recognize the decision of the court" and was ready to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Thousands of miles (kilometers) from the Siberian jail where its founder is imprisoned, representatives of the ruined Russian oil giant Yukos and the Russian government will meet face to face for the first time at the European Court of Human Rights this week as the dismantled company seeks to prove that its rights were violated.

Fearful it would never get a fair day in a Russian court, Yukos representatives filed a complaint with the European court on April 24, 2004 on the ground that it was "targeted by the Russian authorities with tax and enforcement proceedings, which eventually led to its liquidation."

Six years later, Thursday's hearing is a milestone in Yukos' efforts to win acknowledgment that the Russian government's actions were "unlawful, disproportionate, arbitrary and discriminatory, and amounted to disguised expropriation" of the company. Russian authorities had accused Yukos of shady deals and shell companies used to hide revenue from tax authorities.

Russian authorities began pursuing Yukos in 2002 on allegations of tax fraud. Through the courts, they ultimately froze its assets, forced it to sell its shares in other companies and declared it insolvent in 2006 before the company was finally liquidated a year later.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch who founded the company in the chaotic years that followed the Soviet collapse, was convicted on charges of fraud and tax evasion and has been imprisoned since 2003.

Yukos would not give up the fight, however, and representatives of the company's entities that managed to survive kept pressing the complaint they filed with the European court, which was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the United Nations is absolutely immune from such a lawsuit, and its former employees also have immunity.

The ruling upheld a lower court judge's decision to toss out a lawsuit brought by U.S. citizen Cynthia Brzak. She had alleged that ex-refugee chief Ruud Lubbers grabbed her in a sexual manner after a December 2003 business meeting in his Geneva office.

Lubbers resigned from the position in February 2005 because of the attention caused by the scandal. He's also the former prime minister of the Netherlands.

Saudi Arabia could soon allow women lawyers to appear in court, though apparently only representing other women, the country's justice minister said in comments published on Sunday.

Justice Minister Mohammed al-Issa said the ministry is drafting new rules to permit female lawyers to argue family cases, which could be passed soon, Saudi newspapers reported.

The women would be able to represent women in marriage, divorce, custody and other family cases, the newspapers said.

Female lawyers in the kingdom, where strict Islamic doctrine and shariah law have enforced separation of genders, can currently work only inside the women's sections of law and government offices, where they do not come into contact with men.

A court in Beijing denied an appeal by one of China’s best-known democracy advocates on Thursday and upheld his 11-year prison sentence, human rights activists said.

The Beijing Municipal Higher People’s Court upheld the conviction and unusually harsh sentence of the advocate, Liu Xiaobo. Mr. Liu, a Beijing scholar, played an important role in organizing a document called Charter 08 that called for political and legal reforms. Charter 08 was issued in December 2008; Mr. Liu was subsequently convicted of “inciting subversion of state power.”

The denial of Mr. Liu’s appeal marks the third judicial setback this week for activists in China and the latest signal that China’s leaders remain leery of tolerating greater pluralism.

Tan Zuoren, an activist who said the poor quality of the construction of public buildings contributed to the death toll in the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, was sentenced to five years in prison on Tuesday for sending e-mail messages with comments about the military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

China's highest court has issued new guidelines on the death penalty that instruct lower courts to limit its use to a small number of "extremely serious" cases.

The Supreme People's Court told courts to use a policy of "justice tempered with mercy" that takes into consideration the severity of the crime, the state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted court spokesman Sun Jungong as saying in a report late Tuesday.

The guidelines reflect the court's call last July for the death penalty to be used less often and for only the most serious criminal cases. China executes more people than any other country, but the high court has been more outspoken recently about the need to tone it down.

The court reviews all death sentences from lower courts before they are carried out, and its comments have indicated more of those death sentences could be overturned.

Still, China faced strong international criticism at the end of December when it executed a British man accused of drug smuggling, despite a plea for mercy from the British prime minister and concerns that the man had mental problems.

Rights group Amnesty International has said China put at least 1,718 people to death in 2008. China does not release an official count.