The Vatican charged 10 persons with financial crimes on Saturday, including an Italian cardinal. The charges follow an inquiry by the Vatican Gendarmerie. The charges center around the Vatican Secretariat of State’s investment in Raffaele Mincione’s Athena Capital Global Opportunities Fund. Mincione, who allegedly used fund money for personal investments, received charges of “embezzlement, fraud, [...]

A new United Kingdom-funded task force was formed Monday to investigate human rights violations in Myanmar that have occurred since Myanmar’s February coup. The project, called Myanmar Witness, was created “to independently collect, preserve, process, verify, investigate and review incidents of possible interferences with human rights.” The initiative is funded through the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth [...]

Ethiopia’s federal government announced a ceasefire in Tigray on Friday. The Ethiopian National Defense Force and the Provisional Tigray Administration left Tigray’s capital as part of the ceasefire, pausing eight months of war. The Tigray Defense Force, a guerrilla warfare group, has not agreed to the government’s ceasefire. Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political [...]

The US Supreme Court on Friday decided to hear a case brought by two Maine families who want to use a state tuition program to send their children to Christian schools. Families who reside in Maine towns that do not have public schools are allowed to use the tuition assistance program to pay for a [...]

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a public report Tuesday stating that most federal agencies that use facial recognition technology systems are unaware of the “privacy and accuracy-related risks” that such systems pose to federal agencies and the American public. After holding a forum on AI oversight, the GAO developed an artificial intelligence (AI) [...]

Per the order list published Friday, the US Supreme Court declined an appeal from a Washington State-based florist who refused to sell flowers to a same-sex couple. The Court did not issue an opinion with the rejection. The petitioner, Barronelle Stutzman, denied service to Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed, a couple who planned to get [...]

The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 6-3 in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta that California can not require nonprofit organizations to disclose the names and addresses of their largest donors. California requires nonprofits to disclose their Service Form 990 to the state attorney general (AG). Service Form 990 is the primary tool for [...]

The Trump Organization and its Chief Financial Officer, Allen Weisselberg, were charged on Thursday with fraud and other tax crimes, receiving more than $1.7 million of compensation without paying taxes. The criminal charges followed from a long investigation by prosecutors of the Manhattan District Attorney and New York Attorney General; where the 15-year scheme to [...]

Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on scheduling federal executions on Thursday, “pending review of policies and procedures.” Garland cited the inconsistent application of the death penalty, particularly leading to a disparate impact on persons of color, and a large number of exonerations in capital cases as reasons necessitating the review of its application. [...]

US Judge Robert Hinkle from the Northern District of Florida (Tallahassee Division) Wednesday granted a preliminary injunction against Florida’s new social media law FL SB 7072 which, among other things, mandated social media companies to publish detailed standards for censorship, shadow-banning, and de-platforming of users. It also required that these standards be applied consistently and [...]