A bill introduced in the House of Representatives on Tuesday would authorize a referendum on Puerto Rican statehood, to be voted on by the commonwealth’s citizens on November 3, 2020. Such a referendum would mark the third time Puerto Ricans have voted on statehood since 2012. Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative Jenniffer González-Colón says that statehood [...]

A hundred and fifty representatives hailing from the Syrian government, the opposition, and broader Syrian civil society met Wednesday in Geneva to discuss the drafting of a new constitution. According to the procedural rules of these UN-facilitated discussions, meetings of the 150-member Committee will take place in parallel with a smaller “drafting group,” made up [...]

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who serves as a director on the National Security Council (NSC), testified on Tuesday before the House committees overseeing the impeachment hearings about President Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In his prepared remarks, Vindman expressed concern that the president and members of his administration were risking US national security [...]

The NCAA Board of Governors voted Tuesday to implement a process of modernizing a student-athlete’s ability to benefit from his or her name, image, and likeness. The vote comes after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act, which would allow student-athletes in California to make money from endorsements. The NCAA’s press [...]

A new report commissioned by Korea Peace Now and produced by an international panel of experts, titled “The Human Costs and Gendered Impact of Sanctions on North Korea,” outlines the gendered and humanitarian cost of UN-backed and unilateral sanctions against North Korea. According to the report, sanctions exacerbate an already troubled economy and women shoulder [...]

The United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on India to restore rights to India-administered Kashmir on Wednesday. On August 5, India’s government introduced a bill that revoked the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir. The government decided to divide the state into two federally-administered territories, which will [...]

Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas Judge Joseph James struck down three Pittsburgh gun-control ordinances. The ordinances were passed in response to last year’s mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue and were widely supported by Mayor Bill Peduto and several City Council members. The gun-control ordinances regulated the use of assault weapons and prohibited the [...]

The US House of Representatives voted in favor of two measures on Tuesday that admonish Turkey for its recent military incursion into northern Syria: a resolution that recognizes the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of Armenians and a bill that authorizes various sanctions against Turkey. The resolution recognizes and condemns the killing of nearly 1.5 million Armenians [...]

The European Union agreed on Monday to extend the deadline for Britain to ratify an exit agreement until January 31, 2020, giving the United Kingdom three months to approve a deal for their withdrawal from the EU. In response, the House of Commons voted to hold a general election on December 12 to elect a [...]

German federal public prosecutors charged two suspected former Syrian intelligence officers with “more than 4000 alleged cases of torture” in the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz in October. The case, which is anticipated to start in 2020, will be the “first criminal trial worldwide” over alleged crimes against humanity in Syria. The defendants are Anwar R [...]