The Illinois State Senate on Thursday approved a bill to legalize same-sex marriage . The senate voted 34-21 to lift the ban on same-sex marriage in the state of Illinois. The bill, referred to as the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, was passed largely on party lines with only one Republican voting in favor [...]
Egypt’s National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (NTRA) on Thursday appealed a court order banning YouTube because it features the controversial film Innocence of Muslims . The film, which sparked violent protests throughout the Middle East last year, depicts the Prophet Mohammad as a sexual deviant. The NTRA argues that the court ruling is unenforceable because it [...]
A group of UN experts on Thursday urged Venezuela to release Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni from prison. Afiuni has been incarcerated since 2009 after she freed a prisoner that the government of President Hugo Chavez wanted jailed. According to her lawyer, Afiuni was raped in prison and subsequently had an abortion. The group of UN [...]
A group of UN human rights experts joined Thursday to urge Indonesia to amend a Bill on Mass Organizations that is currently being considered by the legislature. The proposed legislation would require organizations to register with the Ministry of Home Affairs and affirm that they believe in only one God and that they are not [...]
Iraq’s Justice and Accountability Committee announced Thursday that the country’s chief judge Medhat al-Mahmoud has been been removed from his office over ties to Saddam Hussein’s Baath party . The committee, which is responsible for removing former Baath party members, explained that Wednesday’s decision came after the parliament provided evidence supporting the allegations. The judge [...]
A federal judge on Thursday accepted the guilty plea of Transocean Deepwater Inc. along with a criminal settlement of $400 million and $1 billion in civil penalties for the company’s violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA) during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill . Judge Jane Triche Milazzo of the US District Court for [...]
Two members of the US House of Representatives on Wednesday reintroduced a controversial bill that would allow private companies and the federal government to share private security information related to cyber threats. In a bipartisan effort, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers and Maryland Democrat C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger brought forth the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act [...]
Kenyan presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday to postpone his trial. Kenyatta, a former finance minister, argues that his defense team needs more time to respond to evidence revealed to them at the last minute leading up to the trial. The charges arise from Kenyatta’s involvement in the violence [...]
An Oslo City Court on Thursday sentenced a Rwandan man to 21 years for being an accomplice to the 1994 Rwandan genocide . His conviction was specifically related to 2,000 killings during April 1994 to which the defendant, Bugingo, had significant connection. Sadi Bugingo moved to Norway in 1994 after the genocide and has been [...]
An Egyptian court on Wednesday ordered that the former chief-of-staff for deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak , Zakaria Azmi, be released from prison after he was granted a retrial in a corruption case. Azmi was brought to court on charges of illegally acquiring and concealing real estate gains and was sentenced in May 2011 to [...]
