A German who claims the CIA illegally whisked him to a secret prison in Afghanistan appeared before Europe's human rights court Wednesday in what could be the final chapter of a case that has shed light on U.S. practices in the war on terror.

Khaled El-Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, says he was brutally interrogated at a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan for more than four months after being kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, apparently mistaken for a terror suspect. He says he went on a hunger strike for 27 days and was eventually flown back to Europe and abandoned in a mountainous area in Albania.

Having failed with previous legal efforts in Germany, Macedonia and the United States, el-Masri has turned to the European Court of Human Rights as a last resort in the hope that it will declare that Macedonia breached his basic rights, said his lawyer.

"Mr. El-Masri has spent the last eight years seeking legal redress for the crimes that were committed against him," James Goldston told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "There is abundant evidence including data on CIA flights to and from (Macedonia's capital) Skopje."

Authorities in Macedonia have denied any involvement in el-Masri's alleged kidnapping and sought Wednesday to have the Strasbourg, France-based court dismiss the case. A lawyer representing the small southeast European nation argued that el-Masri was too slow in filing his initial criminal complaint in Macedonia.

A Guatemalan mother who says her child was stolen and later turned over to a U.S. couple for adoption said Tuesday that she will go to a Missouri court seeking to get her daughter back now that the U.S. State Department has said it doesn't have jurisdiction to help return the girl.

The State Department confirmed Tuesday that it has informed Guatemala's government that it can't help return Anyeli Hernandez Rodriguez because the U.S. and Guatemala had not signed the Hague Abduction Convention at the time of the alleged kidnapping in 2006.

"We're obviously deeply concerned about allegations regarding stolen children and inter-country adoptions wherever these cases come up," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement. "We consider the appropriate venue in the United States for pursuing this case is in the state courts. They're the competent organ for holding a full hearing on the merits and the best interests of the child."

A human rights group that has pursued the case in Guatemala's courts on behalf of the child's biological mother, Loyda Rodriguez, said the next step will be to find a U.S. law firm to file a civil suit charging immigration fraud.

A former winner of the television show "Holland's Next Top Model" has won a lawsuit against Elite Model Management after she was dropped for having hips the agency considered too large.

The Amsterdam District Court ruled Wednesday that Ananda Marchildon, now 25, was entitled to the main prize she won in the 2008 production of the show, a three-year contract worth $98,500.

Marchildon argued she was dismissed after only $13,000 worth of work because she didn't lose enough weight to please the agency.

According to the written ruling, though Marchildon had gained weight since getting the contract, she had a hip measurement of 92 centimeters (about 36.2 inches) when she won, and Elite could not demand that she go down to 90 centimeters — about 35.4 inches. That is far smaller than the average woman's hips but not unusual in the modeling world.

As part of our experience representing owners, contractors and design professionals throughout the industry, we have written and negotiated contracts based on industry standard forms (such as the AIA forms) and have also developed custom contract documents for specific clients and projects. Based upon our experience drafting and negotiating contract documents, as well as our advice and representation of clients in construction disputes, we know what works in a contract and what does not.

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A European Union court ruled Thursday that social networking sites cannot be compelled to install general filters to prevent the illegal trading of music and other copyrighted material.

The decision is a victory for operators of social networking sites in the EU, but a setback for those who seek to protect copyrighted material from being distributed without payment or permission.

It also comes as protests are growing in Europe against ACTA, the proposed international Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which is meant to protect intellectual property rights.

In Thursday's decision, the EU Court of Justice, which is based in Luxembourg, ruled that requiring general filters that would cover all the site's users would not sufficiently protect personal data or the freedom to receive and impart information.

SABAM, a Belgian company that represents authors, composers and music publishers, filed the lawsuit leading to Thursday's ruling. In it, the company objected to the practices of Netlog NV, a social networking site, saying users' profiles allowed protected works to be shared illegally.

Michael Gardner, head of the intellectual property practice at London law firm Wedlake Bell, called the ruling a further blow to copyright owners because it appears to rule out forcing operators of social network sites and Internet service providers — at their own expense — to impose blanket monitoring and filtering aimed at stopping infringements.

An Italian court Monday convicted two men of negligence in some 2,000 asbestos-related deaths blamed on contamination from a construction company, sentencing each of them to 16 years in prison and ordering them to pay millions in what officials called a historic case.

Italian Health Minister Renato Balduzzi hailed the verdict by the three-judge Turin court as "without exaggeration, truly historic," noting that it came after a long battle for justice.

"It's a great day, but that doesn't mean the battle against asbestos is over," he told Sky TG24 TV, stressing that it is a worldwide problem.

Prosecutors said Jean-Louise de Cartier of Belgium and Stephan Schmidheiny of Switzerland, both key shareholders in the Swiss construction firm Eternit, failed to stop asbestos fibers left over from production of roof coverings and pipes at its northern Italian factories from spreading across the region.

During the trial, which has stretched on since December 2009, some 2,100 deaths or illnesses were blamed on the asbestos fibers, which can cause grave lung problems, including cancer. Prosecutors said the contamination stretched over decades.

The defendants had denied wrongdoing.

Hundreds of people, many of them who had lost parents or spouses to asbestos-linked diseases, crowded the courtroom and two nearby halls to gather for the verdict. When the convictions were announced, some of the spectators wept.

Two hours after announcing the convictions, Judge Giuseppe Casalbore was still reading the court's complete verdict, which included awards of monetary damages from civil lawsuits from some 6,300 victims or their relatives who alleged that loved ones either died or were left ill from asbestos.