A Chinese court on Friday sentenced 71-year-old freelance journalist Gao Yu to seven years in prison for ‘leaking state secrets’ to foreign contacts. Yu has been detained since April 2014, and maintains that she is innocent. The sentence has been met with criticism. An official for the European Union Delegation to China remarked that the [...]
The Thai Constitution Drafting Committee (CDC) announced on Friday the completion of the first draft of a potential constitutional charter and its submission to an advisory council for review. The new document would replace the one voided nearly a year ago by military coup and could be ratified as soon as September of this year. [...]
The US House of Representatives on Thursday approved the Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015 , a bill set to end the federal estate tax , by a 240-179 vote. The tax, which Republicans refer to as the death tax, is applied to estates upon passage to an heir after the owner’s death. The current [...]
At the 13th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice on Thursday, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced that prison overcrowding has reached “epidemic proportions” worldwide. “Prison overcrowding can also be considered as a symptom of a malfunctioning justice system, and the problems of overcrowding have to be dealt with by [...]
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin on Friday stated that his nation has requested an expansion of the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation in Ukraine to include recent conflicts in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The nation already granted the ICC permission to investigate crimes on its territory from November 21, 2013, to February 22, 2014, the [...]
The Mexican Congress approved legislation on Thursday that gives the public access to data from almost all institutions that receive government funding. The legislation passed the lower house of Congress 264-68 and will go to the president for his signature. President Enrique Peña Nieto posted on his Twitter account that the measure “will strengthen the [...]
Two UN human rights experts said Thursday that human rights and freedoms should not be sacrificed in the fight against terrorism solely because abridging those rights is politically convenient. Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism and Heiner Bielefeldt , Special Rapporteur on freedom [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said Thursday that the upcoming elections in Burundi place the nation at a critical moment in history, with an opportunity to choose free and fair elections to “strengthen and mature Burundi’s still fragile democracy, and enable an improvement in its dire socio-economic situation.” Speaking at [...]
A bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives on Wednesday proposing to tie any further removal of sanctions against Cuba to the nation’s human rights record . The measure, titled The Cuban Human Rights Act of 2015 and introduced by Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, comes in the wake of President Barack [...]
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed House Bill 1 on Thursday to legalize medical marijuana in the US state of Georgia. The approved legislation is effective immediately and allows for patients suffering from cancer, Crohn’s disease, glaucoma and other serious ailments to receive 20 fluid ounces or less of low-THC cannabis oil. Additionally, HB 1 calls [...]
