US air strikes are resulting in civilian casualties in Somalia, Amnesty International reported Wednesday. The report details five incidents resulting in 14 civilian casualties, with eight more civilians injured within the past two years. These issues began to draw increased international humanitarian attention during Barack Obama’s administration. In October 2016 the administration “broadened the president’s [...]
Mississippi senators on Tuesday passed, by a vote of 34-15, the final version of a bill that bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The Mississippi bill says a physician performing an abortion on a pregnant woman before determining if the unborn human individual has a detectable fetal heartbeat, or one who performs [...]
The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals’ appeals chamber on Wednesday confirmed the conviction of former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic for Bosnian war crimes, increasing his sentence to life in prison. After the first-instance judgment rendered in March 2016, which sentenced Karadzic to 40 years of prison, both the defense and the prosecution appealed. [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania filed a new complaint against the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (DHS) Tuesday over the jailing of mentally ill individuals. The new complaint comes several years after the ACLU of Pennsylvania first brought “a lawsuit on behalf of people who have been found too mentally ill to stand [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday in Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP that a business is not a “debtor collector” under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, except in enforcing security interest under 15 USC §1692f(6). Homeowner and political activist Dennis Obduskey sued law firm McCarthy & Holthus when they attempted to carry out [...]
In a per curiam decision Wednesday, the US Supreme Court remanded, for further review of standing, a case concerning whether cy pres settlements satisfy Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e)(2). The class action case, Frank v. Gaos, originated with an alleged violation of the Stored Communications Act (SCA) by Google. Plaintiffs claimed that Google’s use of referrer headers breached the [...]
A Guatemala judge on Tuesday issued an arrest warrant for the country’s former attorney general and current presidential candidate, Thelma Aldana, on charges of embezzlement, lying and tax fraud. The warrant for Aldana’s arrest, issued by Judge Victor Cruz, “relates to a corruption inquiry involving illegal hiring,” said a Supreme Court official. Aldana has denied [...]
Facebook announced on Tuesday that a settlement has been reached in a civil rights case against the social media giant, as Facebook has agreed to take proactive steps to prevent advertisers from engaging in unlawful discrimination. Last year the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Communication [...]
A Myanmar court in Sittwe on Tuesday sentenced prominent Rakhine leader Aye Maung to 20 years in prison for treason and defamation stemming from a January 2018 speech made one day before deadly riots broke out. Maung, a member of parliament and former chairman of the Arakan National Party, along with writer Wai Hin Aung, were arrested [...]
A jury in a San Fransisco federal court on Tuesday found that Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused a man’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. This lawsuit is only the second of 11,200 Roundup lawsuits to be tried against Monsanto Company and Bayer for cancer-causing Roundup. The first verdict was rendered in August for $289 million against Monsanto. This [...]
