The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday changed Juan Lizcano’s death sentence to life in prison because of intellectual disability. Lizcano joins the list of five other inmates taken off Texas’s death row since the US Supreme Court invalidated Texas’s method for determining intellectual disability of death row inmates. Lizcano killed Dallas police officer [...]
Twenty-nine countries, including the US, Australia, Germany and Japan, released a joint statement on Thursday condemning the government of Belarus’s reported internet shutdowns and content blocking after the country’s fraudulent 2020 presidential elections. President Alexander Lukashenko, who has served as the Belarusian President for 26 years, was re-elected on August 9. However, the EU rejected [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Wednesday that a Pittsburgh police officer who slammed an unarmed Black teen into a wall is not entitled to qualified immunity. The case arose in 2013 when the El brothers were stopped by Pittsburgh Police Lieutenant Reyne Kacsuta outside of a convenience store on the [...]
A federal judge in Louisiana granted an injunction on Wednesday extending Louisiana’s early voting period for the November 3 general election from seven to 10 days, citing COVID-19 concerns. The court also expanded access to absentee ballots. Judge Shelly Dick ruled that “the state’s failure to provide accommodation for pandemic-affected voters is likely unconstitutional because [...]
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued three significant rulings on Thursday, extending the state’s mail-in ballot deadline, preventing third parties from delivering absentee ballots in the state and removing the Green Party Candidate from the presidential election ballot. The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania enacted Act 77 in 2019, which allowed qualified voters to [...]
A few months ago, the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences set a price tag on their drug remdesivir, the first medication shown to be effective for treating coronavirus. The price was set at $520 per vial or $3,120 per treatment course. Experts have called the price “not exorbitant,” and some expected a higher price tag. Yet, [...]
The UN report claimed Thursday that human rights violations are still widespread and remain unpunished in Burundi, despite the new government. The Commission of Inquiry on Burundi, which drafted the report at the request of the UN Human Rights Council, said that there has been little in the way of positive changes as to human rights [...]
A federal judge issued a nationwide order on Thursday blocking changes Postmaster General Louis DeJoy sought to implement to the US Postal Service (USPS) months before the November election. Judge Stanley Bastian of the Eastern District of Washington issued a temporary injunction after hearing arguments from 14 different states suing DeJoy over his new policies. [...]
Maria Kolesnikova, an opposition protest leader in Belarus, was charged with undermining Belarus’ national security on Wednesday. She is one of the few major opposition politicians still in Belarus. Since the presidential election, numerous opposition politicians have fled into exile or vanished. Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who challenged Alexander Lukashenko for the presidency, has fled to Lithuania. [...]
The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday announced the arrest of nine men suspected of participating in the massacre of 44 Bosnian Muslims in 1992. In addition to the nine who have been arrested, the prosecutor’s office has accused two others, an unnamed man living in Canada and Radislav Krstic. The prosecutor’s office [...]
