The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muižnieks on Wednesday called on Turkey to focus on human rights in the wake of their anti-terrorism security measures. The remarks were made at the end of a nine-day official visit to the country to observe the ways in which the Turkish government was balancing human [...]
An education reform group, Students for Education Reform Minnesota , initiated a lawsuit against the state Wednesday claiming state laws governing teacher tenure violates students’ fundamental rights to an education. Minnesota law allows a teacher to obtain tenure after three years. Plaintiffs claim that education is suffering because three years is too short a time [...]
A 49-year old Liberian national and resident of East Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, Mohammed Jabbateh, was indicted in Philadelphia on Wednesday on two counts of immigration fraud and two counts of perjury for failing to disclose his crimes in Liberia when he applied for political asylum in December 1998 and when he was interviewed by an immigration [...]
US Secretary of State John Kerry released the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 on Wednesday, pointing to “a global governance crisis” in is prefatory statement. The secretary cited the “accelerating trend by both state and non-state actors … to marginalize opposition voices, and in the most extreme cases, to kill people [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Wednesday ruled that obtaining phone location records without a warrant was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment . The FBI obtained cellphone locations of two suspects in several robberies, later convicted on several charges, through cell-site data via the two suspects’ wireless carriers. The [...]
A Chicago task force assigned by Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday issued a report finding that racism has caused systematic failures within the city’s police department. The report includes statistics illustrating how African Americans are the group most often targeted and mistreated by police officers within the city of Chicago. According to the task force, [...]
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Wednesday signed an executive order that creates a new anti-discrimination law intended to protect members of the LGBT community. Prior to signing the executive order, there was no state law in Louisiana protecting LGBT individuals from employment discrimination. In signing the bill, Governor Edwards stated, “We are fortunate enough [...]
Panamanian prosecutors for organized crime raided the Panamanian office of international law firm Mossack Fonseca on Tuesday, seeking evidence of money laundering and financing terrorism in relation to the recent Panama Papers scandal. Mossack Fonseca has denied any wrongdoing and claimed that it is “willing and eager to cooperate with authorities.” On the topic, the [...]
Georgia officials executed Kenneth Fults Tuesday after the US Supreme Court Tuesday denied the application for stay of execution. His attorney argued that the jury which sentenced Fults, an African American man, was tainted by the racial bias of at least one member, after Fults pleaded guilty to murdering his neighbor, Cathy Bounds, in 1996. [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern on Wednesday over reports coming out of the Republic of Congo regarding an apparent Government security operation in an area of southern Brazzaville known as the Pool. The reports flow from suspected police action taken against civilians, after the [...]
