Representatives from 29 states on Tuesday asked the US Supreme Court to block the he implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Clean Power Plan (CPP) . The plan seeks to eliminate the amount of carbon emissions through reducing coal and oil production by shifting to other forms of clean energy. West Virginia, Texas and [...]

French lawmakers on Wednesday approved a bill that will allow physicians to keep terminally ill patients sedated until death, opting not to extend the bill to cover physician-assisted suicide. Under the new law, patients will be able to request “deep, continuous sedation altering consciousness until death,” though the request may only be granted when the [...]

Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin on Wednesday released an advisory opinion declaring that daily fantasy sports websites in which players pay to participate are considered gambling and are therefore illegal in the state. Chin noted the difference between friends playing in their own fantasy sports league and wagering significant amounts of money on online websites [...]

Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo on Thursday pleaded not guilty to charges of crimes against humanity at the start of his trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) . Gbagbo faces four charges of crimes against humanity for murder, attempted murder, rape and persecution during a wave of post-election violence between December 2010 and [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday stressed the importance of education to prevent new genocides, speaking at an event acknowledging the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. The Secretary-General spoke at an event at UN headquarters in New York City urging the global community to remember the horrors of [...]

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said Tuesday that Burundian authorities failed to provide entry to independent rights experts dispatched by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate rights violations in the nation. The team, composed of two Special Rapporteurs for the UN and a member of the African Commission [...]

Judges for the International Criminal Court (ICC) have approved an investigation into the 2008 Georgia/Russia conflict. Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda commented that the delay in ICC proceedings was prompted by independent investigations conducted by the governments of Georgia and Russia. Under the Rome Statute , the ICC is barred from conducting its own investigation simultaneous [...]

French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira resigned Wednesday after expressing disagreement with the President Francois Hollande’s proposal to strip convicted terrorists of their French citizenship. The plan, proposed as a revision to the French constitution , went before the French parliament just after Taubira’s resignation. Taubira was actively opposed to the controversial revision, which originally [...]

The Supreme Court of Mexico struck down language in a Jalisco state law on Tuesday defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. The ruling effectively ends the same-sex marriage ban in one of the largest states in the country and allows for same-sex couples to register for marriage licenses immediately. Previously same-sex [...]

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan seeking the replacement of lead water pipes in the city of Flint. The lawsuit, filed in conjunction with Concerned Pastors for Social Action, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and Flint resident Melissa [...]