Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed suit Wednesday against five major drug manufacturers for misleading marketing practices that led to a painkiller epidemic. DeWine filed suit in the Ross County Court of Common Pleas against the manufacturers of drugs such as OxyContin, Percocet, Dilaudid and Percoda, alleging that the companies spent $168 million on sales [...]

Governor Kate Brown signed a bill on Wednesday that allows for transgender Oregonians to make updates to their birth certificates without publicly doing so through the court system. Before the legislation, amendments to document concerning people’s names and genders were required to be publicly posted by the courts. The new bill also allows for changed [...]

The State Assembly of California approved the Immigrant Worker Protection Act on Wednesday in an effort to protect against workplace raids from ICE. The bill, AB 450 , would prohibit California employers from allowing immigration agents to enter a workplace or to view their employees’ files without a subpoena or a warrant. Furthermore, the bill [...]

California senators approved a bill in a 26-12 vote on Wednesday that will add a third gender option to state IDs for people who identify as non-binary. The bill will next pass to the Assembly and, if approved, will need to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown . Should Brown sign the bill, California will [...]

A Bahrain court on Wednesday dissolved a major political party that has opposed the current government, an act that Amnesty International said is a step towards total suppression of human rights. The National Democratic Action Society (Wa’ad) was dissolved after the Ministry of Justice of Bahrain accused the group of “advocating violence, supporting terrorism and [...]

Lawyers from ClientEarth filed a lawsuit against the UK government on Wednesday stating that the country’s proposed plan for reducing the UK’s air pollution is inadequate. On May 5, the UK Department of Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) released a draft of the UK Air Quality Plan for tackling nitrogen dioxide , which details [...]

An Austrian man was extradited Tuesday from Poland to Austria to face war crimes charges for allegedly killing civilians and surrendering troops while fighting for the Ukrainian army. The 25-year-old man allegedly killed Russian separatists while they were injured or surrendering in eastern Ukraine last year. State prosecution spokesman Erich Habitzl stated that Benjamin F., [...]

A new report released Tuesday by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) claims that human rights violations within the Central African Republic (CAR) may amount to war crimes. The report maps 13 years of violence in the country dating from 2003-2015. The 13-year period examined by the report was marked [...]

Dutch lawmakers agreed to create a free-trade area with Ukraine on Tuesday, completing lengthy and contentious negotiations between the EU and Russia. The ongoing geopolitical battle between Moscow and Brussels over the future of Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin considers an integral part of historical Russia, centered on this agreement. All 28 EU members had [...]

The Illinois House of Representatives approved a bill in a vote of 61-53 on Tuesday to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. The bill proposes a series of increases over the next five years to raise the wage from its current $8.25, which is more than the federally mandated $7.25. To help [...]