Brazil’s Minster of Natural Environment said Friday that the country’s government plans to sue BHP Billiton Ltd., Vale SA, and Samarco Mineração SA for USD $5.24 billion for damages caused by a dam collapse at an iron ore site the two co-own. The iron ore site, Samarco Mineração SA, is a joint mining venture between [...]

US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Friday issued an order blocking the Native Hawaiian Role Commission (NHRC) from counting the ballots and certifying the winner of a wholly native-Hawaiian election now taking place in the US state of Hawaii. In 2011 Hawaii enacted Act 195 , which authorized the creation of a race-based voter [...]

A prominent human rights lawyer was fatally shot Saturday while delivering a press statement in Diyarbakir, Turkey. Tahir Elci was an influential figure in the largely Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, and he was the head of the Diyarbakir Bar Association . Elci was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after the shooting. Elci claimed he [...]

Refugees who were released from a detention center in Ankara, Turkey still face deportation , despite the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) approving an application to indefinitely prevent their deportation back to Syria, Amnesty International (AI) reported Friday. The three refugees were detained in Turkey in September after allegedly participating in demonstrations and attempting [...]

Algeria’s former counter-terrorism chief Abdelkader Ait-Ouarabi, also known as General Hassan, was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday for allegedly breaching orders and destroying documents. In 2013 he was forced to retire by a military judge, a move thought by many to be an attempt by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to control the intelligence [...]

Beijing’s Third Intermediate People’s Court on Friday released journalist Gao Yu on medical parole after the Higher People’s Court upheld her conviction for leaking an internal Communist Party document to a foreign website. Though she did receive medical parole as a result of her health, the courts have refused to overturn her conviction which means [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Glenn C. Smith of the California Western School of Law discusses the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act… All petitions to have a lower-court ruling reviewed by the US Supreme Court are long shots. Still, the recently-filed petition for certiorari in Sissel v. DHHS — contending that the Affordable Care Act [...]

Brazil’s highest court, on Wednesday, ordered the arrest of André Esteves , the chief executive of the country’s largest investment bank, and that of Delcídio do Amaral, a powerful senator of the country’s ruling party. Both individuals are accused of obstructing the course of the investigation into bribery and corruption affiliated with Petrobras , a [...]

The US Department of Defense (DOD) and Pentagon officials have completed their investigation into the October 3 bombing of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan and announced on Wednesday that it was an “avoidable accident caused primarily by human error.” Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, General John Campbell , stated that [...]

Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder on Tuesday for the death of black teenager Laquan McDonald in October 2014. A graphic dashboard camera video of the shooting was also released Tuesday and sparked public outcry. City officials have been sharply criticized for waiting over one year since the incident to [...]