Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday ordered a 36-hour ceasefire to allow Russian Orthodox Christians to attend church services around their traditional Christmas. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the call, saying, “the war will be over when your soldiers either leave or we drive them out.” If accepted, the ceasefire would have been the first major [...]

The South Carolina Supreme Court Thursday ruled that the state’s six week abortion ban is unconstitutional and antithetical to the right to privacy. The 3-2 decision came after almost two years after Republican Governor Henry McMaster signed the provision into law February 2021. Justice Kaye Hearn wrote in the majority judgment: The State unquestionably has [...]

Myanmar state broadcaster MRTV reported Wednesday that 7,012 prisoners, including political detainees, will be released by the military-controlled government of Myanmar in commemoration of the nation’s independence day. But a JURIST correspondent in Myanmar doubts that the announcement signals a positive trend for the junta. “We can’t expect much improvement because they do that for [...]

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Thursday proposed a new rule which would ban employers from imposing noncompetition clauses onto their workers. The new rule defines a noncompete clause as “a contractual term between an employer and a worker that prevents the worker from seeking or accepting employment with a person, or operating a business, [...]

New York Attorney General Letitia James Thursday sued ex-CEO and cofounder of crypto trading platform Celsius Alex Mashinsky for defrauding customers. James claims that Mashinsky gambled “hundreds of thousands of investors” out of “billions of dollars of investment” by making risky investments in decentralised finance and hiding the reality of his company’s dwindling assets and [...]

Civil organizations engaged in search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea Thursday released a joint statement condemning Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s new decree. 20 civil organizations said that though Italy’s decree is designed to target them, “the real price will be paid by people fleeing across the central Mediterranean and finding themselves in [...]

US President Joe Biden Thursday announced the US would extend a parole program previously offered to immigrants from Venezuela to immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti but reiterated that his administration would continue to enforce Title 42 in compliance with a recent order from the US Supreme Court. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Wednesday filed an 86-page brief with the Supreme Court in response to two cases against President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan: Joseph Biden v. State of Nebraska and Department of Education v. Myra Brown. The brief agrees with a district court’s holding in Nebraska that the States challenging [...]

A Belarusian court Thursday gave lengthy criminal sentences to independent union leaders and activists. The prison terms add to existing crackdowns on dissent from the increasingly authoritarian government. According to Radio Free Europe, leaders of the Union of Workers of Electronic Outposts Producing Industry (REP) Vasil Berasnyou and Henadz Fyadynich each received a sentence of [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) Wednesday criticized repressive measures on civil society groups by European governments considered to be liberal democracies. In a report, HRW expressed alarm at democratic backsliding in “healthy” democracies such as the UK, Italy, Greece and France. According to the V-Dem Institute, the COVID-19 pandemic aggravated democratic backsliding around the world. The [...]