An Egyptian court Wednesday sentenced 230 protesters to life in prison, finding them guilty of taking part in violent clashes between protesters and security forces in Cairo in December 2011. Among those sentenced, was prominent activist Ahmed Douma, who is seen as one of the leading forces behind the 2011 protest movement that forced president [...]
UK lawmakers on Tuesday voted in favor of a law that would make the UK the first country to allow an in vitro fertilization (IVF) technique that uses DNA from two women and one man. In the House of Commons , members of Parliament voted 382 in favor of passing the law and 128 opposing [...]
The UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers on Tuesday urged Portuguese authorities to increase efforts to ensure a wider access to the country’s judicial system. Special Rapporteur Gabriela Knaul said that greater accessibility to legal aid is necessary amid the continued growth of poverty within the country. Knaul noted that many [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday declined to further stay a lower court’s ruling that overturned Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage. Last month a judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Alabama struck down the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment and the Alabama Marriage Protection Act [...]
Libya’s House of Representatives on Monday voted to suspend the law barring from office any officials that served under Muammar Gaddafi . The law was passed in May 2013 by Libya’s General National Congress (GNC) to ban anyone who worked from Gaddafi, including Libya’s Prime Minister, Ali Zeidan , from holding a position in Libya’s [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday that, after two years of litigation, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) on Monday reached an agreement to settle a series of lawsuits for $1.375 billion. The lawsuits accuse the credit rating firm of defrauding investors and sending out inaccurate ratings on mortgage securities as a way to drum [...]
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Tuesday that the methodology used by British courts to determine whether to mitigate whole-life sentences does not violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which bars inhuman and degrading treatment. Arthur Hutchinson was seeking a judgment on an unsuccessful appeal of his whole-life sentence [...]
Myanmar’s legislature, the Assembly of the Union , passed a new law on Monday granting temporary citizens the right to vote in a constitutional referendum later in 2015. The law will enfranchise approximately 1.5 million temporary citizens, known as white card holders because of the temporary ID they are issued. Lawmakers passed the legislation by [...]
William Schabas , leader of a three-member UN committee investigating possible war crimes committed in Gaza last summer, resigned Monday after Israelis accused him of bias due to his previous work as a consultant for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) . Schabas claimed that the opinion he wrote for the PLO was no different than [...]
Iraq’s Cabinet on Tuesday approved a draft law creating a national guard in a step toward achieving national unity. The Cabinet also approved a draft law reforming a previous ban on former Baath Party members becoming part of the government. This second draft law proved challenging to pass as Sunni ministers boycotted the reform. However, [...]
