Voters in Washington, DC, on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of DC becoming the fifty-first US state. Advisory Referendum B asked voters if the DC Council should petition the US Congress to admit the state of “New Columbia” to the Union. The plan, which will be submitted to Congress, seeks admission to the Union, approval [...]
California voters on Tuesday supported a mandate to eliminate the usage of plastic bags while simultaneously voting down a measure which required fees collected from the bag usage to better the environment. California Plastic Bag Ban Veto Referendum (Proposition 67) and the Dedication of Revenue from Disposable Bag Sales to Wildlife Conservation Fund Initiative (Proposition [...]
The Irish government announced Tuesday that it would submit its appeal within the week against the European Commission’s demand that Apple pay back-taxes. In a statement on Tuesday, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said that the Irish government “fundamentally disagrees with the European Commission’s analysis and the decision left no choice but to take an appeal [...]
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 [...]
