Judge Cathy Bissoon of the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania entered a consent order Wednesday declaring that the Allegheny County jail must put medically vulnerable people within their own cells and keep newly admitted inmates within isolation for two weeks, consistent with Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) orders. Additionally, the [...]
Between a rock (trade wars) and a hard place (U.S. critiques), the WTO Appellate Body has been passing through some turbulent times. Due to the paralysis of the Appellate Body, the European Union (EU) and some other twenty countries have agreed on an arrangement, known as the Multiparty Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), which allows [...]
“The man who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news.” -Bertolt Brecht Any explicit comparisons of the Trump presidency with the Third Reich will elicit multiple cries of horror and execration across the United States, even when it had first been admitted that this American administration is similarly misleading and existentially dangerous. Nonetheless, to [...]
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday for deceptively and unfairly obtaining users’ location information to advance its lucrative advertising business. The complaint provided detailed examples of Google’s “seemingly relentless drive to collect as much user location information as possible and make it exceedingly hard for users to understand what [...]
A group of US senators wrote to the US Secretary of Defense Wednesday expressing concern about the potential for a “significant outbreak” of COVID-19 at the Pentagon prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The letter seeks to determine how the military is safeguarding the 40 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and the American forces responsible for [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday that state courts should be the forum for hearing public nuisance lawsuits against petroleum producers. These lawsuits allege that the producers were promoting petroleum even though they knew that it was causing environmental harms such as drought, rising sea-levels and wildfires. The case comes [...]
Members of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls said Wednesday that certain US states are exploiting the COVID–19 pandemic to restrict abortion rights. The Working Group accused Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Iowa, Ohio, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee of committing human rights violations by infringing on reproductive rights and endangering women’s health. “We [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Tuesday blocked a lower court’s order that Ohio’s election officials must accept electronically-signed and witnessed petitions. Three individuals and two organizations, who are obtaining signatures in support of initiatives to amend the Ohio Constitution and propose municipal ordinances, allege that COVID-19 and the state’s stay-at-home [...]
In this election year and beyond, rightfully, the focus of our national attention and the world’s concern is COVID-19, the economy, healthcare, and jobs. That’s it. The world is reeling from a true pandemic the likes we may not have seen since 1918. The United States struggles in how to rationally tackle not only the [...]
I believe in Amartya Sen’s idea of identity being a composition of multiple affiliations: nationality, language, religion, profession, neighborhood, social commitments, and other connections. I see myself belonging to a lot of groups by virtue of my affiliations: I am a Punjabi from West Punjab (Pakistan) with roots in Kashmir. I strongly admire the cultures [...]
