Members of Iraq’s Yazidi minority on Thursday submitted a report to the International Criminal Court detailing the crimes committed against their community by militants of the Islamic State (IS) and urged the court to open an investigation. The Yazidi group met with chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda in The Hague and said the actions taken by [...]
The Massachusetts state Senate unanimously passed a resolution Thursday to repeal a law requiring a driver’s license suspension of at least six months for anyone convicted of a drug crime. The law required the driver’s license suspension in all circumstances of drug offenses, even if unrelated to vehicle operation. The bill, brought at the initiative [...]
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled 14-2 Thursday that it has jurisdiction to hear the case between Bolivia and Chile regarding land-locked Bolivia’s access to the Pacific Ocean. Bolivia argued to the ICJ that Chile failed in its obligation to negotiate in good faith to grant Bolivia “fully sovereign access” to the Pacific, but [...]
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto announced through his spokesperson Thursday that he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the 2014 disappearance of 43 students from Guerrero. The announcement comes days before the anniversary of the tragedy and shortly after Peña Nieto met with the missing students’ families, who have not been satisfied by past [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled Wednesday that the Fifth Amendment protects the right of insider trading suspects to withhold the passcodes to their business cell phones. Defendants were under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for making illegal trades for a bank using non-public [...]
A North Carolina Superior Court judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss a case challenging the state’s new voter identification requirement. Recently, North Carolina reformed its voter ID law by creating a provision that states that if one has “reasonable impediment” to receiving a state ID then they may have their vote count on election day. [...]
A Bolivian legislative committee approved a bill on Tuesday to amend the constitution to extend presidential terms, allowing current President Evo Morales and his vice president to run for a fourth consecutive term in office. The president’s party, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) won a two-thirds majority in the Legislative Assembly during the last elections, where [...]
Members of the guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government reached an agreement on Wednesday regarding punishing civil rights abuses, a move commended by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon . The two parties met in Cuba after 32 months of negotiations. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos also announced on Wednesday that [...]
In his first interview since being released from prison to house arrest in August 2014, leading Chinese rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng told the Associated Press that he was subject to torture. Zhisheng revealed that while he was held in a Chinese prison from 2010-14 he was tortured with an electric baton to his face and [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Wednesday ordered the release of Sudanese funds held by New York banks to satisfy a $315 million default judgment in the USS Cole case. The lower court found in 2012 that Sudan had provided “material support” to al Qaeda and ordered compensation for the 17 [...]
