The Constitutional Court of Poland barred abortion due to fetal defects in a controversial decision handed down Thursday. The court held that termination of pregnancy in that circumstance had no constitutional justification and it violated the constitutionally guaranteed right to life. The court stated in a pre-judgment press release that The unborn child, as a [...]

A three-judge panel of the Athens Appeal Court has rejected appeals for suspended sentences by leaders of the Golden Dawn party. It ruled Thursday to imprison 39 leaders of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, including 13 legislators following their convictions for running the party like a criminal organization. These sentencing decisions by the court end a [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called for the creation of a new international treaty that would ban autonomous weapons or any other form of so-called “killer robots.”  In a report issued Tuesday the international rights group advanced a detailed proposal outlining essential elements for a treaty seeking to prevent the use of “all weapons systems that [...]

The Parliament of Sri Lanka Thursday passed the Twentieth Amendment to the country’s constitution, repealing a past administration’s limitations on presidential powers and expansion of parliamentary powers. The amendment has raised concerns that authoritarian President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s power has become unbounded. The amendment was passed in the Sri Lankan House by a vote of 156-65. [...]

On Thursday the United States and the governments of Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda co-sponsored the so-called Geneva Consensus Declaration urging member states to achieve (1) better health for women, (2) the preservation of human life, (3) the strengthening of family as the foundational unit of society, and (4) the protection of every nation [...]

The cities of Seattle, New York and Portland, Oregon, filed a lawsuit against US President Donald Trump Thursday, challenging his efforts to withhold federal funding from those cities for having permitted “anarchy, violence and destruction” as alleged in a Presidential Memorandum issued in early September following a wave of protests and civic disturbances largely animated by [...]

US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe said in a press conference Wednesday that Russia and Iran have obtained voter registration information which can be used to communicate false information to registered voters. The Treasury Department has responded to the interference by instituting sanctions solely targeting Iran. Ratcliffe asserted that Iran is distributing “spoofed” [...]

International investment bank Goldman Sachs Thursday admitted criminal wrongdoing by a Malaysian subsidiary of the bank in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission filed in New York. The SEC settlement agreement summarizes the bank’s wrongdoing as “a scheme perpetrated by now former senior employees of Goldman Sachs who authorized and paid bribes and [...]

On Wednesday the UK Home Office announced that beginning in January of 2021 they will implement tougher criminality restrictions for European Union citizens who wish to enter the United Kingdom. Then new rules will take effect the same day that free movement between the EU and the UK ends. Under this new restriction, foreign criminals [...]

The government in the India-administered regions of Jammu and Kashmir Wednesday extended its ban on high-speed internet in 18 of the 20 districts of these regions. The ban, which began in August of 2019 when India downgraded Jammu and Kashmir from statehood to union territory status, is now set to last until November 12, 2020 [...]