The US Treasury Department imposed new economic sanctions Thursday on 19 Russian individuals and five entities for their interference in the 2016 US election, and a number of other destructive cyber-attacks. The Treasury Department highlighted continuing Russian destabilizing activities, including the 2016 election and the NotPetya attack, a cyber-attack attributed to the Russian military on [...]
Turkey’s parliament on Tuesday approved legislation modifying electoral regulations, leading to a brawl on the chamber floor as the opposition says the new rules could lead to fraud and undermine the integrity of a slate of polls scheduled next year. The legislation allows the Supreme Electoral Council to redraw voting districts and move ballot boxes [...]
South Africa’s former president Jacob Zuma is facing trial over 16 charges related to corruption, South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority boss Shaun Abrahams announced on Friday. The charges include one count of racketeering, two counts of corruption, one count of money laundering and 12 charges of fraud relating to a 30 billion rand (USD $2.5 [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Thursday vacated the Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule by a vote of 2-1. The Fiduciary Rule reinterprets the term “investment advice fiduciary” and redefines exemptions to provisions concerning fiduciaries that appear in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). The rule was challenged [...]
Amnesty International (AI) called for a full investigation on Thursday into the killing of Rio de Janeiro councilwoman Marielle Franco. Franco, a 38-year-old human rights defender known for her outspokenness against police brutality, was shot dead late Wednesday night in what appears to be a targeted assassination. AI’s Brazil director, Jurema Werneck, cited the shooting [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report on Thursday detailing human rights violations that occurred during the early parts of the investigation into the kidnapping of 43 students from Ayotzinapa in Mexico. The OHCHR’s report covers human rights violations from September 2014 to January 2016 committed by the [...]
The Kyoto District Court ruled Thursday that the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) , which operated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, was liable to voluntary evacuees in the sum of USD $1 million for failing to take adequate measures to protect the plant from the tsunami. Presiding Judge Nobuyoshi Asami noted a 2002 government [...]
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria released a report on Thursday condemning the pervasive sexual and gender-based violence that has occurred over the past six and a half years in the Syrian conflict. The report, entitled “I lost my dignity: Sexual and gender-based violence in the Syrian Arab Republic,” was written after UN workers [...]
The US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on Wednesday granted a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of Ohio’s recently proposed HB 214 , a bill which criminalizes the performance of an abortion procedure where a woman’s decision to terminate her pregnancy is partly or wholly motivated by a diagnosis of Down syndrome [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration Thursday for its “arbitrary detention” of asylum seekers. All of the plaintiffs named in the case are asylum seekers fleeing persecution, torture or death in their home countries. All of them have also passed fear screenings, meaning that their fear of [...]
