Judge Trevor McFadden of the US District Court for the District of Columbia Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) challenging President Trump’s May executive order on “preventing online censorship”. The executive order was issued with the expressed intent of promoting “free and open debate online”. It asserted that [...]
A US federal court judge Friday denied a motion for a preliminary injunction against Governor Tom Wolf’s ongoing mask mandate and Covid-19 contact tracing program. The motion was part of a lawsuit filed in the Middle District of the US District Court of Pennsylvania in September. The suit was brought by the American Freedom Law [...]
An international tribunal on Friday issued five life sentences to Salim Jamil Ayyash, a Hezbollah member who was convicted in absentia in August for the assassination of former Lebanon prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in 2005. Hariri was killed in a massive suicide bomb explosion in Beirut which also killed twenty-one other people and injured 226. [...]
More than 1,000 pro-democracy protestors in Thailand rallied Thursday for revocation of the kingdom’s lèse majesté law, which proscribes acts of defaming, insulting or threatening the king, the queen, the regent or the heir apparent. The protestors gathered at the 14 October 1973 Memorial which commemorates civilian protestors who lost their lives in the 1973 [...]
The Trump administration on Thursday finalized sweeping asylum regulations that will come into force January 11, 2021 as part of a mass immigration crackdown. Under the Final Rule, asylum claims will face greater scrutiny if an immigration court finds that an asylee has traveled through another country before entering the United States without first seeking [...]
The US Supreme Court late Friday denied the motion for leave to file a complaint in Texas v. Pennsylvania, which had sought to invalidate election results in four swing states that President Donald Trump lost in the November 2020 presidential election, namely Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had claimed there was rampant [...]
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Friday that she intends to open an investigation into possible crimes committed during Islamist rebel group Boko Haram’s Nigerian insurgency that began in 2009. Bensouda indicated that a preliminary examination into the situation had found a reasonable basis to believe that Boko Haram and its splinter groups committed [...]
Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to normalize relations between their respective countries on Thursday, following the lead of other Arab states like Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Jordan and Egypt. The US contributed to the deal between Israel and Morocco by recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over West Sahara. Netanyahu [...]
A Kenyan High Court issued a declaratory order on Thursday in favor of four survivors subjected to rape and other sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) during post-election demonstrations spanning from December 2007 to March 2008, awarding them each 4 million shillings ($35,906). The survivors brought suit against the attorney general and inspector-general of the National [...]
Amnesty International called on Airbnb Thursday to remove its approximately 200 rental properties located within the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) before the company’s Initial Public Offering (IPO). Amnesty claims that these properties are in illegal Israeli settlements and “are at the heart of systematic human rights violations faced by Palestinians. In preparation for the IPO, [...]
