The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida (ACLU) filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of eight same-sex couples against Florida challenging the state’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages performed legally in other states. The lawsuit , filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida , names Governor Rick Scott, Attorney [...]
The European Parliament passed a resolution on Thursday condemning Russia’s actions in Crimea and calling for the immediate withdraw of all Russian military forces from Ukrainian territory. The resolution states that Russia is in breach of international law and existing conventional obligations, including the UN Charter, the OSCE Helsinki Final Act, the Statute of the [...]
The UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez on Wednesday urged governmental bodies to refuse goods and information obtained by “acts of torture and ill-treatment” in other countries. Mendez noted the hypocrisy of governments that condemn torture committed by another country while continuing to accept products and information from them. He stated that the justification [...]
US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Wednesday rejected without comment an emergency application to block enforcement of an ordinance that effectively prohibits the possession of large-capacity ammunition magazines by civilians in a California city. Section 9.44.050 of Sunnyvale Ordinance No. 3027-13 defines “large-capacity magazine” to mean “any detachable ammunition feeding device with the capacity [...]
The US Department of Defense on Wednesday announced the transfer of Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Belbacha to Algeria. Belbacha, a native Algerian who was detained in Pakistan in 2002, had been held at Guantanamo for 12 years without a trial or formal charges. Algeria tried Belbacha in absentia in 2009, convicting him of belonging to an [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday urged the UN Human Rights Committee to find that US electronic surveillance programs violate fundamental human rights. The US is due to appear before the committee on March 13 and 14 for a review of its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) . Andrea [...]
The Mississippi Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a bill that would ban abortions as early as 18 weeks. The House version of the bill that was passed last month would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Though the House bill calculated pregnancy as beginning when the embryo implants itself in the uterus, [...]
The Israeli Knesset on Wednesday approved a bill that would draft previously exempt individuals, including ultra-Orthodox men, into the military. Security Service Bill (amendment No. 19), 2014, also known as the Enlistment Bill and the Equal Service Bill, was approved in its third reading by a vote of 65-1, with opposition parties boycotting the vote. [...]
Emad Abdullah Hassan filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia that challenges the force-feeding procedures at the Guantanamo Bay military prison. Hassan, who has been held in Guantanamo since 2002, alleges that he has been force-fed more than 5,000 times since 2007 in an effort to [...]
Italy’s highest court, the Court of Cassation , on Tuesday upheld guilty verdicts against three US defendants in the 2003 extraordinary rendition kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect. The three Americans are CIA agents who participated in the kidnapping of terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr on a Milan street. The final ruling made by [...]
