UK Home Secretary Priti Patel Sunday announced that she is bringing forward legislation that would ban people from attending football (soccer) games for ten years if they are found guilty of online racism related to football. Through this legislation, “Football Banning Orders” (FBOs), currently imposed on people convicted of violence, disorder, and homophobic or racist chanting, would [...]

Beginning in the new year, people in Switzerland will be able to legally change their gender with only a visit to the civil registry office. The Swiss parliament passed amendments in 2020 to the civil code and the civil status ordinance that would allow people to change their first name and their gender quickly and [...]

Amnesty International Saturday reported that a nonbinary Jordanian LBTQI+ activist, who has been identified as AOA, has been improperly arrested and detained in Beirut while planning to fly to Australia to seek asylum. AOA’s arrest comes after they spent several years working in LBTQI+ rights in Jordan and eventually left to flee their allegedly oppressive and influential [...]

Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor Saturday blocked the website of prominent rights and protest monitoring group OVD-Info after a court decision, the group said in a statement. OVD-Info is an independent Russian human rights group that has documented anti-Kremlin protests for several years and allegedly is fighting political persecution in Russia. The Russian government adopted the Federal [...]

South Korea President Moon Jae-in Friday announced that former President Park Geun-hye would be granted a special pardon from a 20-year prison sentence for bribery and corruption-related charges. Park, 69, is among 3,094 persons to be granted the special amnesty. South Korea’s Ministry of Justice has stated that the pardon is aimed at promoting “national [...]

A New York state judge Friday upheld a ruling banning The New York Times from publishing documents related to Project Veritas. Judge Charles Wood of the Westchester County Supreme Court ordered the New York Times to turn in physical copies of documents in question and delete digital versions of the documents. Project Veritas is a [...]

In their final report released Friday, the Gambia Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) called for the prosecution of former President Yahya Jammeh and co-perpetrators for 44 cases of murder, torture, and rape. The TRRC was established to investigate crimes committed in Gambia under the leadership of Jammeh from 1994 to 2017. The commission’s report resulted [...]

The Supreme Court will overturn the law recognizing a woman’s fundamental right to choose an abortion. The only question is whether it will go even further and jeopardize women’s equality, reproductive rights, and family privacy rights for all.  Pending in the Court is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the question of the constitutionality [...]

Russia imposed heavy fines on Google and Meta Friday for their repeated failure to take down illegal content. A law passed earlier this year obligates social media entities to remove content deemed illegal under Russian law. Meta was fined 2 billion rubles and Google was fined 7.2 billion rubles. This is the first time a Russian court [...]

China adopted a new national law Friday for protecting wetlands. Under the new framework, land reclamation and drainage on wetlands will be generally prohibited, as well as the permanent blockage of water sources to natural wetlands. Other prohibited activities include the pollution of wetlands through the discharge of industrial or sewage wastewater and through excessive fertilization [...]