Former Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim received a royal pardon Wednesday and was released after serving three years of his five-year sentence. He was sentenced for sodomy in proceedings that were widely seen as politically motivated . Amnesty International had previously called Anwar’s imprisonment a human rights violation. Malaysia held elections on May 9—their first [...]
Texas, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nevada and Pittsburgh filed lawsuits on Tuesday against Purdue Pharma LP and other opioid painkiller makers, alleging the companies contributed to the current opioid crisis by misrepresenting the risks of their drugs. Attorneys General of the states allege that Purdue deceptively marketed its drug to profit, thereby violating [...]
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the State of Iowa and the Iowa Board of Medicine in the Iowa District Court of Polk County over a recently passed abortion law, Senate File 359 . The lawsuit seeks to prevent the enforcement of Section 4 of the Act, which makes it [...]
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed a bill on Tuesday that will ban conversion therapy from being practiced on LGBT minors. SB 1028 defines conversion therapy as “a practice or treatment by a mental health or child care practitioner that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” Conversion therapy is now defined as [...]
The Greek parliament approved a draft bill on Tuesday to expedite the asylum process for migrants and refugees and cure the overcrowded refugee island camps. The bill addresses “issues concerning the reception, hosting and integration of asylum seekers and refugees, speeding up asylum procedures as well as provisions related to immigration policy.” The Migration Policy [...]
The US Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it joined a whistleblower lawsuit against Insys Therapeutics Inc. on Monday in an effort to combat the opioid crisis. The DOJ will take over prosecuting the False Claims Act case in the US District Court for the Central District of California , against Insys, which produces the [...]
Human rights defenders in Pakistan have been the targets of cyber attacks, according to an Amnesty International report Tuesday. The report identifies four different methods of cyber attacks that are being utilized. These include the use of fake social media accounts to deliver malicious surveillance technologies to human rights defenders, phishing attempts to steal human [...]
Federal judge Mark Walker for the US District Court of the Northern District of Florida denied the request by the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Sunday to use pseudonyms for teenagers involved in the legal challenge against new Florida gun laws. In March, the Florida legislature passed new restrictions to purchasing a firearm, including raising [...]
The High Court of Taiwan on Tuesday sentenced former president Ma Ying-jeou to four months jail for leaking national security and legal documents along with information pertaining to opposition Ker Chien-ming. The High Court of Taiwan overturned a decision from a lower district court, convicting Ma of violating the Communications and Surveillance Act. Ma has [...]
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory Michael Lynk on Tuesday condemned Israel’s excessive use of force toward unarmed protesters at the Gaza fence. For the past few months, human rights experts and the International Criminal Court (ICC) have called for the Israeli government to address its military’s [...]
