China announced 12 US military-industrial companies and their senior executives as new sanction targets on Wednesday. The sanctions include the freeze of movable, immovable and other types of properties in China, and the refusal to issue visas and deny entry (including to Hong Kong and Macau) to 10 senior executives of the companies. The Chinese [...]

The New York State Senate approved a bill on Wednesday that would allow evidence of a defendant’s prior sexual offenses to be admissible in sex crimes cases. The bill, which passed with a vote of 55-4, now moves to the State Assembly for further consideration. The bill comes in response to the New York Court [...]

The President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, declared a state of emergency in seven of the country’s 24 provinces Wednesday for the internal armed conflict. Article 1 of Executive Decree 275 placed the provinces of Guayas, El Oro, Santa Elena, Manabí, Sucumbíos, Orellana, Los Ríos, and the canton of Camilo Ponce Enríquez in the province of [...]

The California Senate passed legislation Tuesday that, if approved by the state assembly, would create an agency to implement policies and facilitate reparations for descendants of chattel slaves, while also authorizing the compensation of Black families whose land was seized under the state’s eminent domain power. S.B. 1403 would stop short of appropriating state funds [...]

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles explained in an interview on Tuesday that the extent of Australia’s security partnership with the Solomon Islands is unknown due to the islands’ government undertaking a security review. The Australian defence minister confirmed both governments want to continue their security partnership. The newly elected Solomon Islands Prime Minister, Jeremiah Manele, [...]

Human rights organization WOLA (the Washington Office on Latin America) on Wednesday issued a statement of solidarity with groups within El Salvador fighting for citizens unjustly detained following the country’s major gang crackdowns in March 2022. In conjunction with 84 other advocacy groups, WOLA criticized the dramatic increases in the surveillance and interference of human [...]

Free speech organization Article 19 released its 2024 Global Expression Report (GER) on Tuesday showing that more than half of the world’s population is “living through a freedom of expression crisis,” unable to speak freely. In 2023, the percentage of people living in this crisis rose to 53 percent, or about 4 billion people. This [...]

Politically motivated crimes in Germany were at an all-time high in 2023, the highest since the German government started tracking them in 2001, according to a Tuesday report published by the country’s Federal Ministry of Interior. A total of 60,028 politically motivated crimes were recorded last year. While the overall number of politically motivated crimes [...]

Over 50 civil society organizations urged the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in a Wednesday open letter to ensure that any forfeited assets from its landmark case against construction materials company Lafarge are directed to support victims and survivors of atrocity crimes associated with Syria. The letter expressed grave concerns that money from the case [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday against Bulgaria in Mandev and Others v Bulgaria, a case relating to unfair and unjustified forfeiture of assets as proceeds of crime and high court fees. In this case, the court joined five applications in a single judgment. First is the application of Mandev, who [...]