Reinhold Hanning, a 94 year-old former Auschwitz guard, was convicted by a court in Detmold, German,y Friday and sentenced to five years in prison for his role in murder of 170,000 people. Hanning served as a guard at Auschwitz from 1942-1944. He joined the Hitler Youth as a young teenager and entered the SS at [...]
Former Guatemalan president Otto Pérez Molina and former vice president Roxana Baldetti are among 70 people facing charges in relation to an scheme embezzling millions of dollars of government money. The most recent charges for the pair, who are both facing charges resulting in their resignations, set out “illegal financing, embezzlement and money laundering.” According [...]
Brazil must place more emphasis on remedying and preventing business-related human rights violations, according to a report presented Friday by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights . In its report, the Working Group focused upon several issues affected by business operations within the country, including the displacement of indigenous populations, increased death [...]
Canada’s Liberal government said Thursday that it would strike an amendment expanding the definition of who may seek physician-assisted suicide. The bill , which was passed Wednesday by the Senate , would allow individuals that are not terminally ill to seek physician-assisted death. Current legislation only extends this right to terminally ill patients or those [...]
A group of independent UN human rights experts urged India on Thursday to repeal a law increasingly being used to obstruct civilian access to foreign funding. This news comes in the wake of a six-month suspension on the registration of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Lawyers Collective , under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) . [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Wednesday signed an order rejecting Texas’ attempts to halt Syrian refugee resettlement in the state. The order provided a factual summary stating that because Texas “fails to state a plausible claim for relief” the court would dismiss the case. The court [...]
A UN-mandated human rights inquiry reported Thursday that the Islamic State (IS) has been committing genocide against the Yazidi people, in addition to a carrying out a variety of other war crimes and human rights violations. The Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria issued a 41-page report , entitled “‘They came to destroy’: ISIS Crimes [...]
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Tuesday declassified 50 documents related to its detention and Interrogation program pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. This several hundred-page release covers internal CIA documents as well as other documents that were cited in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the program. The files [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday in Universal Health Services v. United States ex rel. Escobar , a case dealing with fraud claims against federal contractors. The question before the court was whether the “implied certification test” under the False Claims Act is valid and if so whether the relevant statute has to state [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday in Kingdomware Technologies, Inc. v. United States in favor of a veteran-owned business in a challenge against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) . In 2006 Congress passed a bill that states the VA “shall” award contracts to veteran-owned small businesses if at least two such businesses bid [...]
