US President Joe Biden issued a memorandum Thursday directing US federal agencies that are engaged abroad to “promote and protect the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons.” The memorandum states that it is building on a similar memorandum issued by President Obama in 2011, when Biden was serving as his vice-president. The Biden memorandum directs agencies [...]
In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, the US Supreme Court ruled that the heirs of Jewish art dealers cannot bring a lawsuit in US courts against Germany over the alleged forced sale of art and artifacts under the Nazi regime. The case, Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, concerned a trove of medieval Christian relics [...]
The parliament of Portugal voted on Friday to legalize euthanasia, which, if signed into law, would make it the seventh country in the world to do so. The vote was 136-78 with four abstentions in favor of approving the bill, which would allow people over the age of 18 who are in extreme suffering or [...]
A Montana federal district court judge on Wednesday ruled against the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) implementation of a rule published in the waning days of the Trump Administration. Judge Brian Morris held that the rule could not take immediate effect because the agency had violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) in determining the rule could [...]
The Thai Senate on Monday voted to amend the criminal code by allowing early term abortions. The criminal code previously criminalized women who had abortions, either performed by others or by the women themselves, with penalties of up to three years in prison and a 6,000 Baht fine. However, last February the Constitutional Court ruled [...]
Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a motion to vote on the constitutionality of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The motion was brought to the floor by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who raised two objections to the trial going forward. First, he noted that the Constitution says impeachment only applies to the President, Vice-President, [...]
A UN briefing on Friday called for an end to the violence in West Africa’s Sahel region, where more than two million people have been displaced within the borders of their own countries. Boris Cheshirkov, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said that the number of internally displaced [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday struck down the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, ending the Trump administration’s efforts to relax rules regarding the emission of greenhouse gases from power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under former president Donald Trump had promulgated the ACE rule in an attempt [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday blocked implementation of most of a rule that would have dramatically increased the fees for immigration proceedings in which individuals face deportation. The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) is the agency that conducts immigration proceedings, and it charges fees for [...]
The US Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation continue to make arrests and file charges in relation to the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol Building by pro-Trump rioters. Acting US Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen attended a briefing Thurday at the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center, where he was brought up [...]
