The Obama administration on Friday issued final rules requiring health insurance plans to provide women with contraceptive coverage without cost sharing. According to the rules, these final regulations seek to protect public health and guarantee women equal access to health care and are narrowly tailored so that certain organizations with religious objections do not have [...]
A court in Bangladesh on Friday sentenced nine politicians from the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to life imprisonment for the murder of journalist Gautam Das in 2005. Shortly before his murder, Das published a series of reports detailing corruption by BNP officials. The International Press Institute (IPI) , a press freedom advocacy group, applauded [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by five residents of American Samoa who claimed that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees them US citizenship at birth. Although American Samoans are considered US nationals, American Samoa is the only US territory where birthright citizenship is not [...]
The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) released a report Thursday which presses Iraqi leaders to develop measures addressing the growing trend of human rights abuses in Iraq. According to the UN, terrorist groups killed more than 3,100 Iraqi civilians and injured more than 12,100 during 2012. UNAMI stresses that these figures indicate a reversal [...]
The US Senate on Thursday approved a bill which would create new pathways to US citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants now living in the US. Senators voted 68-32 to pass the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, which would allow undocumented immigrants to work and travel within the US [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Jessica Levinson of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, examines the US Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry…
Despite significant human rights achievements, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Thursday urged countries to “refocus their efforts to achieve universality, and impartiality with regard to justice.” Speaking at the Vienna +20 Conference, Pillay reminded countries to “revive the spirit” of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (VDPA) , adopted by [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on Thursday ruled that Hobby Lobby may challenge the mandate to provide employees with coverage for contraceptives under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) . The appeals court reversed the denial of a preliminary injunction from the US District Court for the Western District [...]
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday welcomed a regional agreement announced Wednesday to deter piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. The Summit of the Gulf of Guinea Heads of State and Government closed with the adoption of the International Maritime Organization Code of Conduct concerning the Prevention and Repression of Piracy, Armed Robbery against Ships, [...]
Convicted terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as ‘Carlos the Jackal’ , on Wednesday lost an appeal of his conviction for taking part in four bombings in France in 1982 and 1983, including two bombings that took place in Marseilles on New Year’s Eve in 1983. A total of 11 people were killed in the [...]
