The Vatican charged 10 persons with financial crimes on Saturday, including an Italian cardinal. The charges follow an inquiry by the Vatican Gendarmerie. The charges center around the Vatican Secretariat of State’s investment in Raffaele Mincione’s Athena Capital Global Opportunities Fund. Mincione, who allegedly used fund money for personal investments, received charges of “embezzlement, fraud, [...]

The US Department of the Treasury on Friday removed sanctions on three Iranians, but stated that the move did not reflect a change in its sanctions policy toward Iran. The department announced that it had removed Behzad Ferdows, Mehrzad Ferdows and Mohammad Reza Dezfulian from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Specially Designated Nationals [...]

A new United Kingdom-funded task force was formed Monday to investigate human rights violations in Myanmar that have occurred since Myanmar’s February coup. The project, called Myanmar Witness, was created “to independently collect, preserve, process, verify, investigate and review incidents of possible interferences with human rights.” The initiative is funded through the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth [...]

Ethiopia’s federal government announced a ceasefire in Tigray on Friday. The Ethiopian National Defense Force and the Provisional Tigray Administration left Tigray’s capital as part of the ceasefire, pausing eight months of war. The Tigray Defense Force, a guerrilla warfare group, has not agreed to the government’s ceasefire. Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political [...]

The US Supreme Court on Friday decided to hear a case brought by two Maine families who want to use a state tuition program to send their children to Christian schools. Families who reside in Maine towns that do not have public schools are allowed to use the tuition assistance program to pay for a [...]

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a public report Tuesday stating that most federal agencies that use facial recognition technology systems are unaware of the “privacy and accuracy-related risks” that such systems pose to federal agencies and the American public. After holding a forum on AI oversight, the GAO developed an artificial intelligence (AI) [...]

In the New York Times on May 20, 2021, there was a story about a government program to pay off early loans to black farmers, to compensate for past oppressive lending practices. Bankers were criticizing the program because early payoffs hurt bank profits. Some white farmers sued and won a TRO, the court finding that “Plaintiffs [...]

Per the order list published Friday, the US Supreme Court declined an appeal from a Washington State-based florist who refused to sell flowers to a same-sex couple. The Court did not issue an opinion with the rejection. The petitioner, Barronelle Stutzman, denied service to Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed, a couple who planned to get [...]

Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS) announced on Friday that the prosecution of Soldier F, the only British soldier to be charged in connection with the Bloody Sunday killings of 1972, will be discontinued. It was also announced that planned proceedings against a second soldier, Soldier B, will not be commenced. The announcement comes after [...]

The US Supreme Court turned away a case challenging libel protections for journalists and the media enshrined in a landmark 1964 ruling on Friday. However, dissenting opinions from conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch questioned the rationale behind the continued use of these legal protections. The conservative Justices’ opinions signaled a recognition of the [...]