President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday, titled “Expanding Apprenticeships in America,” shifting the federal government’s responsibility of creating and monitoring apprenticeship programs to third party private entities such as businesses, nonprofit organizations, and unions. Under this new system, the third party entities can set their own standards for success and submit their [...]

A bipartisan group of state attorneys general from Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Texas on Thursday announced joint investigations into the marketing and sales practices of the manufacturers of opioid painkillers. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey stated: “The opioid epidemic is a public health crisis that is claiming lives in our state and across the country, [...]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced in a memorandum on Thursday that it will keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in place for the foreseeable future. DACA allows for immigrants who came to the US as children, known as “Dreamers,” to obtain work permits and remain in the country legally. According [...]

A UN-appointed panel of experts released its findings from an investigation regarding human rights violations in Burundi on Thursday. According to the experts, these human rights violations include illegal executions, torture, inhumane treatment, sexual and gender-based violence, arbitrary arrests and detention, and orchestrated kidnappings. The experts also attest that many of these violations were committed [...]

The Canadian Senate on Friday approved Bill C-16 , adding “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the list of federally prohibited grounds for discrimination under Canada’s Human Rights Act. In an official statement from the Justice Department of Canada the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, said: The purpose of this [...]

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback allowed a bill that permits public hospitals, mental health facilities and other health-providing facilities to ban concealed weapons, to become law on Thursday without his signature. HB 2278 was passed by Senate on a 24-16 vote. Brownback, a strong gun rights advocate, in a criticized the bill for restricting gun owners’ [...]

Japan’s parliament, the National Diet , passed a controversial “anti-conspiracy” bill on Thursday aimed at improving security and combating terrorism. Critics of the new bill, including the Japanese Bar Association and a UN Special Rapporteur , worry it will be used to curb civil liberties and infringe on privacy rights. The law amends an existing [...]

Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an adoption bill into law on Thursday that allows adoption agencies receiving public funding to refuse to place children in adoptive families or foster homes that conflict with the agencies’ religious beliefs. The bill passed in the Senate in May. The law states , “A child welfare services provider may [...]

Six individuals joined with several civil rights groups, including Black Lives Matter Chicago , to file a federal lawsuit against Chicago, accusing the city police force of racial discrimination against African Americans and Latinos. According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs are seeking “a city-wide, class action injunction prohibiting the abusive policies and practices undergirding the [...]

The European Court of Justice on Thursday ruled that the BitTorrent sharing site, The Pirate Bay (TPB) , is directly infringing on copyright laws. TPB allows users to share and download movies, television shows and audio files. Unlike earlier piracy websites, such as Napster , TPB does not host files or link to them. Instead, [...]