The Thailand National Legislative Assembly (NLA) on Tuesday passed amendments to the bill permitting the production, import, export, possession and use of cannabis and kratom for medical purposes. The bill allows the use of certain amounts of cannabis and kratom necessary for treatment of illness with prescriptions or certificates from medical professionals, and possession is subject [...]
The Rwandan government released a statement Monday that French Magistrates Jean-Marc Herbaut and Nathalie Poux closed an ongoing investigation last Friday, into the 1994 downing of former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane. Habyarimana, a member of the Hutu ethnic majority, died in April 1994 when his plane was shot down near the Rwandan capital. The assassination [...]
The Iraqi Cabinet announced that it has amended the national holiday laws to add Christmas Day as a national holiday in Iraq. Iraq had been home to over some 1.4 million Christians before the Iraq civil war. That number has dropped to approximately 400,000 due to the increased religious persecution during the height of the [...]
Protests have been ramping up across Sudan in response to the nation’s acute economic crisis. Inflation reached 70% in November and many have been forced to spend significant portions of their income on bread, leading some to refer to the demonstrations as the “bread protests.” Protesters have reportedly called for President Omar al-Bashir, who has been [...]
The closed trial of detained human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang began Wednesday in Tianjin amid protests. Wang and approximately 300 other lawyers and legal activists were arrested during the 709 Crackdown on July 9, 2015. Though most of the detainees were eventually released, Wang has not been seen in three years, despite international pressure to [...]
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been sentenced to seven years in prison after he was found guilty on Monday of owning assets “disproportionate to his known sources of income.” An anti-corruption court in the country’s capital Islamabad imposed a fine of USD $25 million on Sharif. It also disqualified him from holding public [...]
An order issued by India’s federal government on Thursday has authorized 10 of the country’s security and intelligence agencies to intercept, monitor and decrypt information from any computer resource. The move has drawn criticism from opposition political parties amid fears of heightened government surveillance infringing on citizens’ right to privacy. Issued by the interior ministry [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled 2-1 Thursday that the district court lacked jurisdiction over the removal and detention claims raised to prevent the deportation of Iraqi nationals. This decision affects the deportation of Iraqi nationals who committed criminal offenses while in the US. Prior to 2017, Iraq did not facilitate [...]
Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a bill Monday that reinstates Supreme Court judges whose forced removal was deemed as a serious violation of democratic standards by the EU. In April Poland passed a law that lowered retirement age from 70 to 65 and led to a forced early retirement of 27 of the 72 Supreme [...]
An Egyptian court on Thursday cleared 40 NGO workers, including at least 15 Americans, from charges in a retrial of a case that caused some tension between Egypt and the US. In 2013 43 workers had been sentenced to jail terms from one to five years, accused of operating NGOs without proper approval. Egypt’s top [...]
