The New Jersey legislature voted to legalize the sale of marijuana on Thursday in a move making New Jersey the first state in the region to legalize the drug. The New Jersey legislature voted to approve the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory, Enforcement Assistance, and Marketplace Modernization Act (S21). The vote is in line with the [...]
The Chilean Senate unanimously approved a bill to reserve 17 of its 155 seats for indigenous communities in its upcoming constitutional convention. The bill provides a fixed number of seats for representatives of certain indigenous communities in the country. Mapuche, the largest indigenous group, will enjoy seven seats. The Senate did not reserve seats for [...]
Federal judges in Georgia dismissed two GOP-led lawsuits Thursday that attempted to modify the state’s absentee voting rules ahead of the January 5 Senate run-off elections. The elections will determine control of the Senate in 2021. Both lawsuits allege that the mail-in absentee ballot process presents “opportunities to obscure the true identities of persons fraudulently claiming to [...]
A French court convicted 14 people on Wednesday as the accomplices of the Islamic extremists who carried out the 2015 terrorist attacks against the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish market. The Paris judges found the defendants guilty of various crimes including, financing terrorism, membership in a criminal network, and complicity [...]
The Trump administration finalized a rule on Tuesday allowing the US to send people seeking asylum to countries they pass through on their journey to the border. The most recent deal to come out of the Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA) is with El Salvador. Similar agreements also exist with Guatemala and Honduras. But critics say [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia is detaining hundreds of migrants, mainly Ethiopian, in degrading conditions at a deportation center in Riyadh. Migrants alleged to HRW that authorities are keeping them in overcrowded rooms for extended periods. Migrants also alleged that guards have beaten and tortured them with rubber-coated metal rods, which has [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit declined Tuesday to reconsider its August decision that blocked four Arkansas abortion restrictions from taking effect. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Reproductive Rights challenged the measures on behalf of Dr. Frederick Hopkins, a Little Rock abortion provider. The measures, which could [...]
The High Court of Justice dismissed a civil claim Wednesday brought by Rangzieb Ahmed against MI5, MI6, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the Attorney General and Greater Manchester Police. Ahmed, who was convicted of a series of terror offences in 2008, issued proceedings against the defendants in 2009, claiming damages for false imprisonment, assault, battery, [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday that Nevada’s 50-person cap on religious gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic is unconstitutional because it places harsher attendance limits on religious gatherings than on casinos and other secular businesses. The ruling relates to Directive 021, one of the many COVID-19 directives issued by Nevada Governor [...]
Reuters released a comprehensive report Wednesday on women’s deaths in jails across the US. The report collected data from more than 500 jails from 2008 through 2019 and documented 914 female inmate deaths. The report cited suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, deficient medical care for inmates detoxing from opioids, and inadequate medical standards for treating pregnant [...]
