Spain’s state prosecutor on Wednesday summoned 712 Catalonian mayors who have said they will allow the use of public space for an independence referendum that is due to take place October 1. Last week the Spanish Constitutional Court suspended the referendum and agreed to hear arguments to determine if it violates the Spanish Constitution which [...]
The Angola Constitutional Court on Wednesday dismissed four opposition parties’ challenge to the August 23 election in which one party gained over 60 percent of the popular vote. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola party (MPLA) now holds 150 out of 220 seats in the nation’s parliament. The court said that the election [...]
The Minnesota Supreme Court overruled part of a state disorderly conduct statute on Wednesday, saying that it violated the First Amendment because it is “overbroad.” Minnesota Statues 609.72, subd. 1(2) makes it a crime for a person to disrupt a legally held assembly. The case was brought after defendant Robin Lyne Hensel appealed her conviction [...]
International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda renewed her calls to the Libyan government on Wednesday for the immediate arrest and surrender of Mahmoud Mustafa Busayf al-Werfalli, who is alleged to have participated in war crimes in Libya. Specifically, al-Werfalli is suspected of directly participating in seven incidents involving the deaths of 33 individuals. [...]
US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday introduced his “Medicare for all” bill. The Medicare for All Act of 2017 , which is cosponsored by 16 democrats including 2020 front runners Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren seeks to fundamentally change the American health care system to a single-payer plan. Under the bill, individuals [...]
A group of individuals represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts challenging the “searches and seizures of smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices” at the borders. The complaint alleges that such searches “absent a warrant supported by probable cause and without particularly [...]
A coalition of rights groups, led by Human Rights First , called on the US Departments of State and Treasury Wednesday to use the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act to sanction foreign citizens accused of human violations and corruption. The organization sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of the [...]
The Brazil Supreme Court authorized another investigation on Tuesday into possible corruption and money laundering by President Michel Temer . Supreme Court Justice Luis Roberto Barroso stated that there is enough evidence believe it is “plausible” the president received bribes in exchange for favoring a company operating in the port of Santos. The decision to [...]
The House of Representatives of the Philippines on Tuesday voted 119-32 to cut the annual budget of the Commission of Human Rights (CHR) down to 1,000 pesos, equivalent to USD $20. CHR originally requested a budget of 1.72 billion pesos for 2018, an increase from their 2017 budget of 749 million pesos. While the government [...]
The Pietermaritzburg High Court of South Africa ruled Tuesday that the 2015 election of a faction loyal to South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, is invalid. Zuma loyalists took control of the KwaZulu Natal province , the ancestral home of the president, in 2015 at a party conference after ousting former African National Congress (ANC) KwaZulu-Natal [...]
