Condemnation

It's a monthly ritual in the race for the White House. The government releases a lackluster employment report, and President Obama's Republican challengers leap at the chance to condemn his jobs record. "He's going to have a hard time putting perfume on this pig," Mitt Romney snapped Friday morning on Fox News shortly after the report for November came out. What Romney ignored, as Republicans running for president routinely have, is a pattern in the jobs numbers: For 21 straight months, the number of private-sector jobs has grown, by a total of 2.9 million.

The United Nations' top human rights forum on Friday condemned Syria for "gross and systematic violations" after an independent panel found evidence suggesting the country's security forces had committed crimes against humanity. The resolution approved by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva adds to pressure on President Bashar Assad's increasingly isolated government, which has faced multiple rounds of sanctions for its violent crackdown on an 8-month-old uprising. Diplomats said it was also a call to action by the U.N. Security Council and General Assembly and the International Criminal Court, although there was no direct mention of those bodies in the approved version of the text.

The European Union slapped new sanctions on Iranian individuals, companies and organizations Thursday in response to a report alleging that Tehran had pressed ahead with ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. European governments also kept up their condemnation of the ransacking of the British Embassy in Tehran on Tuesday by an angry mob of protesters. Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands have temporarily recalled their ambassadors from Tehran in solidarity with Britain, which shut down its embassy Wednesday and gave Iranian diplomats in London 48 hours to leave the country.

Serial wife-killer Jerry Stanley wants to die. Imprisoned on death row for the past 28 years, Stanley insists he deserves execution for the cold-blooded killing of his fourth wife in 1980 and for shooting to death his second wife five years earlier in front of their two children. Despairing of the isolation and monotony of San Quentin's rooftop fortress for the purportedly doomed, Stanley earlier this year stepped up his campaign for a date with the executioner by offering to solve the cold case of his third wife's disappearance 31 years ago — by disclosing where he buried her body.

Banners waved and angry slogans echoed as tens of thousands of Egyptians protested Friday against the ruling military council, which they blame for hijacking a revolution that once bore the hope of leading the restive Arab world toward democracy. Dominated by Islamists, with a smattering of secularists and liberals, crowds swelled into Tahrir Square in one of the largest demonstrations since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February. Despite competing political agendas, the factions were united in condemning the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' refusal to cede power to a civilian government.

The most important holiday of the Muslim calendar got off to a violent start in Afghanistan on Sunday when suspected insurgents staged a bombing outside a mosque in the north, killing at least seven worshipers and injuring more than a dozen other people, Afghan officials said. The attack in Baghlan province, which came on the first day of the three-day Eid al-Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, was condemned by Afghan officials as un-Islamic. Gen. John Allen, the U.S. Marine who commands all Western forces in the country, called the bombing "despicable.

A conservative gay rights group on Friday condemned Rick Santorum for his comments during a GOP presidential debate, which they said showed disrespect to U.S. servicemen. In a statement, GOProud, which represents conservative gays, lesbians and transgender individuals, condemned Santorum's comments and called on him to apologize to the Stephen Hill, the gay soldier who asked the candidates whether they would seek to circumvent the repeal of the “don't ask, don't tell” policy.

China has sentenced three Tibetan monks as accessories to murder for having helped another monk burn himself to death in a political protest. In the closely watched case in Sichuan province, Drongdru, the uncle of the monk who committed suicide, was ordered imprisoned for 11 years for "intentional homicide" in hiding the young monk, Phuntsog, and preventing him from getting medical treatment. Two other monks were sentenced to 10 and 13 years in prison after a separate trial Tuesday in which they were accused of "plotting, instigating and assisting" in the self-immolation of the 16-year-old monk, according to Tibetan exile groups.

  More than 200 people crammed into a meeting room Saturday in this city's heavily Latino Fruitvale District to condemn Secure Communities, the federal deportation program that was billed as targeting "serious convicted criminals" but has ensnared many who committed minor offenses or were never convicted of the crimes on which they were arrested. Joined by a handful of Bay Area elected leaders, the largely Spanish-speaking crowd called on Gov. Jerry Brown and Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris to take a stance against the program.

The top U.N. human rights panel ordered its investigators Tuesday to begin looking into possible crimes against humanity during Syria's 5-month-old crackdown on antigovernment protesters, while Syrian activists accused security forces of blocking a U.N. fact-finding team from visiting areas of unrest. The U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva — voting as Syrian activists said government forces killed five civilians Tuesday in an opposition stronghold, Hama — also condemned what it called "grave and systematic" violations of human rights by Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.