The deaths of four individuals at the hands of Pakistani police over the weekend have sparked public outrage. Police in Pakistan claimed to have killed four “terrorists” linked to the Islamic State (IS) in an “intelligence-based” gunfight near the city of Sahiwal in Punjab province on Saturday. It was only when an injured nine-year-old boy, [...]
The US Supreme Court on Monday denied certiorari in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which involved a football coach at a public high school who claimed that school officials retaliated against him for engaging in prayer on the field. The case raised the question of how public-sector employers must balance their dual obligations under the [...]
The Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to review a case that contests New York City’s prohibition on the transportation of personal firearms outside city limits. The petition for certiorari comes from a case brought by the New York State Pistol & Rifle Association (NYSPRA) alongside other gun owners against the city of New York. Current [...]
The US Department of Justice said Tuesday that it will urge the Supreme Court to expedite the process of determining whether the 2020 census will include a citizenship question. This request follows US District Judge Jesse Furman’s order last week to halt the Trump administration’s plans to add the question to the census. In the Department [...]
A Russian judge ruled in a closed pretrial hearing Tuesday that US citizen Paul Whelan will remain in Russian custody until his trial. Whelan has been imprisoned in Russia since December 28, when Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Whelan on suspicion of espionage while he was allegedly visiting Russia for a wedding. Whelan was later charged [...]
France’s data protection watchdog group (CNIL) fined Alphabet’s Google on Monday for breaching EU internet privacy rules. The €50 million (USD $57 million) fine is the largest penalty thus imposed on a US tech company, thanks to an increase in sanction limits under the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR, enacted in [...]
The US Supreme Court issued an order on Tuesday to reverse a lower court’s injunction preventing the Trump administration from implementing its ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military. The Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the injunction in November. The injunction, issued by the US District Court for the Western District [...]
When the Delhi High Court sentenced a former parliamentarian to life in prison for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom in December, it ended an excruciating 34-year ordeal for victims of the hate crime that shook India’s national conscience and threatened to tear apart its social fabric. Spurts of sectarian violence are not uncommon in [...]
A spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Friday that they are concerned over Montenegro’s sentencing of investigative journalist Jovo Martinović. Martinović was sentenced to 18 months in prison on charges of drug smuggling and membership in a criminal organization, what the OHCHR believes were likely “politically motivated as credible [...]
Virginia’s state senate passed a bill on Thursday by a vote of 23-17 that prohibits the state from sentencing defendants with severe mental illness to death. The bill defines “severe mental illness” as the “exhibition of active psychotic symptoms that substantially impair a person’s capacity to (i) appreciate the nature, consequences, or wrongfulness of the person’s conduct; (ii) exercise [...]
