The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday announced the results of a national postal survey on Australia’s marriage law in which voters voted that Australia’s marriage law should be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry. The “yes” vote had 61.6 percent of the national votes, and was the majority in every state and territory [...]

LGBT individuals in China are being subjected to abuses in the form of “conversion therapy,” according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) . According to HRW, public hospitals and private clinics are utilizing so-called “conversion therapy,” regarding LGBT individuals’ identity as a disorder. In 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed [...]

Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) officials pledged Tuesday to respect the Iraq Federal Supreme Court‘s interpretation of Article I of the Iraq Constitution , effectively agreeing not to secede. The Iraq Supreme Court stated in its decision last week that no region within the country may secede from the country. The court interpreted Article I of [...]

The European Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that an EU citizen who becomes a British citizen is allowed to have their non-EU spouse live with them in the UK. The ruling came in a case brought by a Spanish national who had attained dual citizenship status with Spain and the UK and then the UK [...]

An animal rights organization filed a writ of habeas corpus Monday on behalf of three elephants owned by the Connecticut-based Commerford Zoo . The writ was brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) for the confinement and mistreatment of the elephants. NhRP is seeking a status of “personhood” for the elephants but claims that “personhood” [...]

Special master in the case of Covington v. North Carolina submitted a draft plan and order yesterday that includes an initial proposal for new district maps in certain state congressional districts. This plan was drafted by special master, Nathaniel Persily , pursuant an order from a three-judge panel for the US District Court for the [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Monday allowed President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban to go partially into effect. The partial ban applies to people of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad, who do not have a connection to the US, defined in the ban as, “such persons including grandparents, [...]

The FBI released the 2016 Hate Crime Statistics on Monday revealing 7,321 recorded criminal offenses motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender and gender identity in comparison to 6,885 of such bias-motivated offenses in the previous year. According to the report, there were 6,063 single-bias incidents involving 7,509 victims of [...]

Twenty-three EU member states on Monday signed a joint notification for the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), a long sought after pact which will facilitate states working together more closely on defense security and defense policy matters. The idea of cooperation in defense security and defense policy was introduced in the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. The [...]

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Sunday held that a lawsuit brought by blind voters in Ohio against Secretary of State Jon Husted can proceed. The suit arises out of a claim that Ohio’s use of a paper-ballot absentee voting system violates Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to [...]