Singapore’s Supreme Court on Monday allowed a gay man to adopt his biological son. The son was conceived through a surrogate mother and born in the US. The man paid the surrogate mother USD $200,000 to carry and deliver the baby after learning that he and his partner would not be allowed to adopt in [...]
UN Special Rapporteur David Boyd praised Fiji Monday for its leadership on climate change and human rights. Boyd supported Fiji’s work toward a global right to a healthy environment. Boyd highlighted some of Fiji’s accomplishments including the adoption of the Environment and Climate Adaptation Levy, investments in renewable energy, and an electrification program for rural [...]
The Attorney General of Malaysia on Monday filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs subsidiaries for their part in the 1MDB scandal. Malaysian authorities allege that between May 2012 and March 2013 three bonds were issued by subsidiaries of 1MDB and underwritten by Goldman Sachs. These bonds raised a total of USD $6.5 billion, of which [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Saturday urged the government of Nicaragua to stop intimidation and harassment against civil society and the media. The High Commissioner’s request follows a highly contentious crackdown on anti-government protests last April, in which more than 50 people were killed. And in May, during the Nicaraguan Mother’s [...]
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced Saturday that the Australian government officially recognizes West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In the prime minister’s announcement, he singled out the UN for hypocritical stances in condemning and passing resolutions against Israel while not taking any action towards Myanmar, Syria or Russia. In addition, the prime minister [...]
A judge of the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled on Friday that when the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 reduced the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) shared-responsibility payment for not obtaining health insurance to $0, the provision ceased being a tax, making it an invalid exercise of Congress’s power to tax. This does not [...]
The Parliament of Kosovo approved a package of bills on Friday that will allow Kosovo to form a military and defense ministry. All three bills, one establishing a Defense Ministry, one that converts the limited Kosovo Security Forces (KSF) into a professional army and another that regulates service in the forces, garnered convincing majority votes [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on Thursday to reduce the scope of a nationwide preliminary injunction that had prevented the Trump Administration from enforcing rules that exempted employers from the contraceptive care requirement of the Affordable Care Act based on religious and moral grounds. The court agreed with the district court’s finding that the Departments [...]
The Tbilisi Appeals Court in the Republic of Georgia on Wednesday rendered a precedent-setting decision for the victim in what is believed to be the country’s first sexual harassment lawsuit against an employer. Journalist and actress Tatia Samkharadze filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment against Shalva Ramishvili, her former boss at Imedi TV in 2016. In January 2018, [...]
Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida, presented a bipartisan bill on Thursday that would extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Venezuelans currently in the US. TPS is a federal program under Section 244 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act that provides status to individuals from countries [...]
