The Hawaii Senate on Wednesday approved a measure to legalize same-sex marriage in the state. The legislation, which has been sent on to the House after a 20-4 vote in favor of the bill, recognizes marriages between people of the same sex and grants to these couples the same rights, benefits and protections currently given [...]
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Thursday for restraint and respect for the rule of law in the wake of violent protests in Bangladesh. The statement echoes a nearly identical one issued in May, after 30 people were killed in protests in the province of Dhaka. Violent protests in Bangladesh have been fueled by the recent [...]
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that juvenile murderers who were subject to mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole will not be resentenced if their cases were final before June 2012. The US Supreme Court ruled last year in Miller v. Alabama that the Eighth Amendment , a bar on the infliction of [...]
Top UN and EU officials denounced the renewed plans for Israeli settlements announced Wednesday by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and Ministry of the Interior . The plans include building more than 1,500 homes in Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. EU High Representative Catherine Ashton in a statement declared them to [...]
Zimbabwe’s highest court on Wednesday rebuked state prosecutors who have been pursuing actions against people for insulting President Robert Mugabe . The court said that this kind of prosecution only brought more disrespect to Mugabe, who has been Zimbabwe’s president since the country’s independence from Britain in 1980. The justice minister was ordered to appear [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday announced that it joined a lawsuit filed against United States Investigations Services LLC (USIS) , the company charged with performing background investigations on potential employees of various federal agencies. The suit before the US District Court for the Middle District of Alabama was brought by a former [...]
The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the claim of a deceased state highway patrol trooper’s same-sex partner that the state’s survivor benefits statute violated his equal protection rights under the Missouri Constitution by denying him benefits based on his sexual orientation. The appellant, Kelly Glossip, appealed a circuit ruling to challenge the survivor benefits [...]
A Spanish court on Wednesday convicted six men of piracy and sentenced one of them to 12-and-a-half years and the other to five to eight years in prison. The men, Mohamed Abdullah Hassan, Mohamed Aden Mohamed, Issa Abdullah Issa, Abdillahi Mohamed Gouled, Mohamed Said Ahmed and Hamoud Elfaf Mahou, were captured while attempting to take [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned a draft Egyptian protest law on Wednesday, saying it falls short of the obligation to respect freedom of assembly. HRW expressed concern over the scope of the law’s application, vague language, and its broad restrictions and discretionary powers. Specifically, the law would apply to any “public meeting” of more than [...]
The UK Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was justified in its decision that withholding certain invasive treatments would be in the best interests of critical care patient David James, despite resistance from the patient’s family. James was admitted to Aintree’s critical care unit in May 2012 for an infection [...]
