North Korean refugees in Russia are at risk of being forcibly returned to North Korea, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Thursday. Many North Koreans travel to Russia for work, but they are kept under surveillance by North Korean officials while they are there. A North Korean worker, Choe Kum Chol, evaded his minders with the [...]

A Florida legislative committee advanced a bill Thursday that would outlaw certain discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida schools. HB 1557, called the Parental Rights in Education bill, would prohibit school teachers or third parties from introducing classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for kindergarten through third grade if that [...]

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) announced their intention Thursday to take the “government of Canada to court” and challenge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act (“the Act”). Invoking a national emergency provides the federal government with sweeping powers to, among other provisions, tackle the ongoing [...]

A federal jury convicted former Los Angeles Angels communications director Ethan Kay Thursday of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and with “knowingly and intentionally” distributing the fentanyl that killed pitcher Tyler Skaggs. The jury deliberated for less than 90 minutes. Skaggs was found dead in a hotel room on July 1, 2019, during a road trip [...]

A Pennsylvania man was arrested Thursday on charges alleging that he tortured a victim in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2015, after a superseding indictment was returned on Tuesday in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The grand jury charged Ross Roggio, 53, of Stroudsburg with directing and participating in the systematic torture of an [...]

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews on Thursday announced that the Australian government intends to list the entirety of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas as a terrorist organization under the Australian criminal code.  Founded in 1987, Hamas was originally a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar Hassan al-Bannain in 1928. [...]

The New York Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that former US President Donald Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. will be required to attend depositions regarding an investigation launched last year into their family business practices. The judge also rejected an attempt by the Trumps to freeze the New York Attorney General’s [...]

The Spain Attorney General’s Office announced Wednesday that it is investigating 68 cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Catholic church staff members. This is the first release of such official data. The Spanish Catholic Church has been under heavy scrutiny since allegations of sexual abuse of minors within the church surfaced in December [...]

The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC) submitted a request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Wednesday for the opening of a preliminary examination into the role of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Iran) and the armed groups in Syria it controls in crimes committed during the conflict in Syria. In the request, the IHRDC [...]

Italy’s Constitutional Court rejected a request Wednesday to hold a referendum on legalizing the cultivation of both marijuana and other psychoactive plants and fungi. In December, activists were able to compile more than 630,000 signatures for the measure, validated by a separate court last month. Although there were more than enough valid signatures for the [...]