Libyan militant Ahmed Abu Khatallah on Monday pleaded not guilty to 17 charges related to the September 2012 attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, including some charges that warrant the death penalty. Prosecutor Michael DiLorenzo suggested that the government may file additional charges against other defendants. When US District Judge Christopher Cooper asked [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Monday urged Venezuela to release politician and opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez . Al Hussein expressed concern over the detention of Lopez and 69 others who were arrested in connection with public protests that took place across Venezuela starting in February. Lopez was arrested on [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Angie Lin, St. John’s University School of Law Class of 2015, is the author of the fourth article in a twelve-part series from the staffers of the Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development. Lin discusses inadequate federal regulation of donated reproductive tissue in assisted reproductive fertility treatments…The one dream that will [...]

The Bolivian top electoral court on Sunday confirmed the reelection of President Evo Morales , making this the politician’s third consecutive term. The president, who will serve in office until January 2020 , received 61 percent of the vote. According to the electoral court, a recount will be conducted at select polling stations due to [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Stefan Kirchner, of the University of Lapland in Finland, discusses the possibility of global discrimination during the ongoing Ebola outbreak … The current Ebola outbreak has lead to discrimination against those infected with Ebola as well as against health care workers caring for those infected or suspected of being infected with Ebola. [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Monday released a report documenting extra-judicial killings by both pro-Russian separatists and pro-Kyiv forces in eastern Ukraine, though the advocacy group cautions that the actual number of atrocities is not on the scale reported by Russian media. According to the report, it is likely that a number of human rights violations [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist D’Arcy Kemnitz, Executive Director of the National LGBT Bar Association discusses reasons why the “gay panic” defense should be outlawed… Just over a year ago, barely a dozen states recognized lesbian and gay marriages. Today, following a sea of change spurred on by rapidly evolving public opinion and a US Supreme Court [...]

Australia’s Parliament House on Monday lifted a ban on face veils including burqas and niqabs. The short-lived ban was announced earlier this month, prohibiting persons with facial coverings from being in open public galleries. The ban was condemned for segregating Muslim women and potentially breaching anti-discrimination laws. Upon lifting the ban, the Department of Parliamentary [...]

UN officials called on the government of Iraq Sunday to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in response to a significant rise in executions since the country restored capital punishment in 2005. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a new report documenting [...]

The US Supreme Court granted certiorari in three cases Monday. In City of Los Angeles v. Patel the court has been asked to resolve a circuit split between the US Courts of Appeals for the Ninth and the Sixth Circuits regarding the constitutionality of hotel guest registry inspection ordinances that authorize unwarranted police inspections of [...]