Former Chinese Deputy Minister, Zhang Liju, was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison after having been convicted of taking 2.4 million yuan ($354000.58 USD) in bribes. The Beijing Second Intermediate Court handed down the sentence along with a 500,000 yuan (USD $73,750) fine, finding that in exchange for the money, Liju approved projects and [...]
The legal status of the death penalty was upheld in three state referendums Tuesday. Oklahoma citizens voted in favor of State Question No. 776, which will add an explicit protection of the death penalty to the state constitution. Oklahoma will be the first state to have such a protection. In September executions in Oklahoma were [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in a case that will determine the constitutionality of citizenship statutes that set different requirements based on whether a child was born to unmarried parents with a US-citizen mother or a US-citizen father. Lynch v. Morales-Santana arose when Luis Ramon Morales-Santana was born in the Dominican Republic [...]
Voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington all approved minimum wage increase initiatives Tuesday, while South Dakota rejected a measure to lower the minimum wage. In Arizona, Proposition 206, which proposed raising minimum wage from the current $8.05 to $10 in 2017 and to $12 by 2020, passed with 59.13 percent of the vote. The [...]
The UK Supreme Court ruled Wednesday against the government in two cases that were challenging the government’s “bedroom tax.” The two decisions were in contrast to the other five cases that were decided in favor of the Department of Work and Pensions. The argument was that the new tax regulations put in place in 2013 [...]
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a request to block a San Francisco law that forbids home-rental companies from reclaiming booking in circumstances where the home has not been registered with the city. Judge James Donato of the US District Court for the Northern District of California rejected Airbnb‘s assertion that the ordinance violated federal [...]
Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara signed a new constitution into law on Tuesday. Voters endorsed the new charter with over 93 percent of the vote in a referendum last month, and the Ivory Coast court upheld the referendum results last week. One of the major changes in the new constitution is that candidates now only [...]
Colorado citizens on Tuesday voted in favor of Proposition 106 , a state ballot proposition that gives terminally ill adult patients the right to self-administer lethal drugs after receiving approval from two physicians. The measure passed with a substantial majority, with over 65 percent of voters in favor. Under the new law, physicians are not [...]
Missouri voters approved an amendment on Tuesday to require voters to present photo identification at the polls. The amendment proposes the same bill that Governor Jay Nixon vetoed in July. The Missouri Legislature overrode his veto in September. Opponents of the bill say that it will make voting more difficult and could disenfranchise voters, while [...]
Colorado voters on Tuesday rejected Amendment 69 (ColoradoCare) , which would have created the state’s first universal health insurance program, with 80 percent of voters voting against the initiative. According to Coloradans for Coloradans , ColoradoCare would be an even bigger burden on the state’s already strained budget. Coloradans for Coloradans also claim that the [...]
