Vermont Governor Phil Scott (R) signed a bill Monday expanding universal mail-in voting to the state’s general elections. Vermont Sen. Cheryl Hooker (D) initially introduced the bill, S. 15, after the state opted to automatically send voters ballots in fall 2020 to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at polling places. The move proved effective with 75 [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Monday that it seized 63.7 Bitcoins—currently valued at roughly $2.3 million—in ransom payments made to the hacking group Darkside, following the targeted cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline in May. According to an anonymous FBI agent’s affidavit, law enforcement tracked several transfers of Bitcoin and ultimately found that 63.7 [...]
France’s antitrust watchdog fined Google €220 million (USD $268 million) Monday for giving preferential treatment to its own proprietary technologies in digital advertisements. Complaints about Google advertising practices, filed in September 2019 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., French newspaper group Le Figaro and Belgium-based Rossel La Voix, prompted the French investigation. Google, the California-based search engine [...]
The US Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a second case involving the scope of the government’s ability to invoke state secret privilege and declined to hear a case challenging the male-only military draft on the basis of gender discrimination. When the court last reviewed the male-only draft rule in the 1981 decision Rostker v. [...]
UN human rights experts on Monday demanded the release of Belarusian dissident Roman Protasevich and an end to the imprisonment and mistreatment of all independent journalists and activists in Belarus, declaring that “media freedom … has entered a black hole with no end in sight.” Last month, a Ryanair passenger jet carrying Protasevich and his [...]
The Louisiana Senate voted 20-17 Monday to lift certain penalties for people charged with possessing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, specifically noting that they should not be jailed. Originally introduced by Rep. Cedric Glover (D), House Bill 652 “amends the penalty for distribution or possession with intent to distribute narcotic drugs,” including marijuana and [...]
US Attorney General Merrick Garland unveiled two new gun safety measures Monday. First, the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposed rule 2021R-08, which would alter the definition of a rifle to include any weapon that “has objective design features and characteristics that indicate that the firearm is designed to be fired from the shoulder.” These “objective [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday on an immigrant status case regarding noncitizens seeking to change their immigration status from temporary protected status (TPS) to lawful permanent residency. The court decided that noncitizens with temporary humanitarian relief from deportation cannot partake in the “adjustment of status” process to obtain lawful permanent residency in [...]
The EU adopted a plan Friday banning Belarus airlines from flying over EU territory or landing in EU airports. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko’s security forces allegedly reported a false bomb threat on a Ryanair flight from Athens, Greece, to Vilnius, Lithuania. The flight was forced to redirect outside of EU airspace to Minsk, where Belarusian security [...]
El Salvador revoked its anti-corruption agreement with the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS) Friday, ending its membership after nearly three quarters of a century. El Salvador officials accused the OAS of showing political bias, and of lacking consistency and principles. The OAS aims to fight corruption through democracy, human rights, security, [...]
