A US federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a Houston, Texas city-program establishing racial goals for public contracts violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, striking down the policy in one of the first rulings to extend a Supreme Court landmark 2023 affirmative action holding beyond the context of college admissions. Houston’s Minority, Women, and Small [...]

The Fort Mojave and the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, along with the Native American Land Conservancy and National Parks Conservation Association on Tuesday have filed two separate lawsuits against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM). Lisa Belenky, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, spoke out against the Trump administration and this recent approval. [...]

United Nations experts on Tuesday warned that twenty years after the Probo Koala toxic waste disaster in Côte d’Ivoire, thousands of victims still remain without justice, compensation, or effective remedies, highlighting what they call “environmental racism” and corporate impunity. In August 2006, the M.V. Probo Koala, chartered by Trafigura, offloaded toxic waste at the Port [...]

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on Wednesday charged Pavel Durov, founder and owner of the messaging app Telegram, with aiding terrorism, and subsequently placed him on an international wanted list. The FSB accused Telegram of failing to remove “numerous channels, chats and bots” allegedly used by Ukrainian intelligence agencies, terrorist and extremist organizations to “prepare [...]

Amnesty International on Wednesday called on Shell plc to answer for decades of pollution in the Niger Delta following release of a report detailing how Shell oil pollution has damaged water, farmland, fisheries, health and livelihoods, while the company continued to profit and deny responsibility. The report, titled “Nigeria: Lifting the Lid: Internal documents expose [...]

British Labour MP Jess Asato on Tuesday filed a request for a court order barring xAI’s Grok chatbot from generating non-consensual sexualized images of her, arguing that the chatbot completely strips women of their personal autonomy by allowing users to digitally manipulate their images without consent. She first filed the claim in June alleging that [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday reported that Perenco, the sole oil producer in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is ausing in production methods that pose grave health and environmental threats to local communities. HRW Central Africa director Lewis Mudge stated: “The Congolese government transparency on oil pollution levels to meet its obligations to [...]

Ousted South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol on Monday was sentenced to a suspended 18-month prison sentence by the Seoul Central District Court for lying during his 2022 campaign. Yoon was indicted over misrepresenting his connections to a fortune teller, who had connections to the controversial Unification Church, as well as lying about his connections [...]

The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela called on the Venezuelan government Monday to reverse its decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), warning that leaving the ICC would weaken accountability for serious human rights violations and limit victims’ access to justice. The Venezuelan [...]

A UN expert warned on Tuesday that policies on border protection and migration cannot nullify the absolute ban on returning a person to torture as set out in international law. The UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Alice Jill Edwards, published a position paper on the principle [...]