Philippine authorities arrested former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Friday in response to a warrant issued that same day on charges of corruption and election fraud occurring during her time as president. Arroyo was arrested in her hospital room where she was being treated for a bone ailment. She was previously unable to seek medical [...]
Russian lawmakers in the city of St. Petersburg on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved an initial reading of a bill that would impose fines against people convicted of promoting homosexuality, including gays or lesbians who are open about their sexuality. The legislation, which was supported by the ruling United Russia party , would ban gay pride parades, [...]
The White House released a statement of administration policy on Thursday praising the work of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) on the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 but warning that President Barack Obama could veto the bill if it “challenges or constrains the President’s critical authorities to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, protect [...]
The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that sponsors of Proposition 8 and other ballot initiatives can defend them in court when the state refuses to do so. When the same-sex marriage ban was initially struck down last year by the US District Court for the Northern District of California , then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former [...]
The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Wednesday issued an arrest warrant for former spokesperson Florence Hartmann for nonpayment of a €7,000 fine imposed for a contempt of court conviction. A five-judge appeals panel reordered the fine imposed on Hartmann, a French national, and then converted the fine into [...]
The UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs stressed Thursday that parties in conflict have a duty to protect non-combatants under international law. Valerie Amos highlighted conflicts in Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as examples of countries where civilians are being targeted. In Somalia, Somalis and Kenyans are engaged in battle to push out the al-Shabaab rebels after [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted former Rwandan mayor Gregoire Ndahimana of genocide and crimes against humanity on Thursday and sentenced him to 15 years in prison. Ndahimana was charged in connection with the 1994 Rwandan Genocide . He was convicted of the killings at Nyange parish between April 6 and April 20, [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi Tuesday remanded to state court the Mississippi attorney general’s lawsuit against the administrator of the British Petroleum (BP) $20 billion Deepwater Horizon oil spill reparations fund, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) . Seeking to enforce an earlier subpoena for access to [...]
The UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) on Thursday decided that Ieng Thirith is unfit to stand trial—just days before the war crimes trial of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders is set to start. Ieng, the former minister of social affairs and the only female leader to be charged, had been charged [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Ed Goldman of the University of Michigan says that fetal personhood laws, which would declare a fetus to be a person from the time of conception, would have a wide range of consequences for women’s medical care, stem cell research, and the availability of contraception… In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court [...]
