The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday upheld four voting restriction laws passed in 2021. The laws were challenged for violating five provisions of the Arkansas Constitution. Arkansas law already required county clerks to find sufficient similarity in the signatures of the absentee ballot application and the voter registration. Act 736 replaced “voter registration” with “voter [...]
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India granted citizenship to its first batch of 14 refugees under the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) on Wednesday. The refugees are from the neighboring countries of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The law was originally proposed and passed in 2019 by the Indian Cabinet. CAA amended the Citizenship Act of 1955, specifically Section 2. The [...]
Amnesty International stated Wednesday that protesters subjected to unlawful force during anti-constitutional amendment demonstrations in Guinea face obstacles to accessing adequate healthcare and justice. According to Amnesty International, as of April 22, 2024, at least 47 people have been killed during demonstrations under Guinea’s military junta, known as the Comité National du Rassemblement pour le [...]
Appeals court upholds Trump gag order in New York hush money trial
The New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division upheld a gag order Tuesday against former president Donald Trump in a criminal case centering on allegations he falsified the Trump Organization’s business records to conceal hush money payments to influence the 2016 presidential election. The appeals court was unpersuaded by Trump’s arguments that the gag order violates [...]
Australia and Tuvalu sign new commitment to improve security relations and eliminate veto power
Australia and Tuvalu released a joint statement Thursday announcing new commitments to improve security relations and remove the veto power Australia previously had over the tiny island nation’s security relations with other countries. The announcement addressed the implementation and interpretation of the Falepili Union, a bilateral treaty which was entered into on November 9, 2023 [...]
Ukraine parliament passes bill allowing convicts to join army for parole
The Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada) passed a bill on Wednesday that allows some convicts to enlist in the army and be eligible for conditional release from serving their sentences, MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak said. The bill still needs to be signed by president Zelensky to become law. Draft law 11079-1 amends the Criminal, Criminal Procedure, Criminal [...]
TikTok sues US government over bill forcing parent company ByteDance to sell or face ban
TikTok and its China-headquartered parent company ByteDance sued US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday over a recently signed law forcing ByteDance to sell its popular social media app under threat of a ban. The plaintiffs claim the law violates the companies’ First Amendment free speech rights while US officials claim it is necessary for [...]
Amnesty International USA condemns university response to campus protests
Amnesty International USA issued a press release on Thursday, condemning university administrations and the police for obstructing and repressing largely peaceful protests against Israel’s military operations in Gaza. This statement comes after various issues between protesting students, and school administrations and the police. In December of 2023, the US House Committee on Education opened a [...]
The Parliament of the Australian state of Queensland passed a bill on Thursday to decriminalise sex work. The Criminal Code (Decriminalising Sex Work) and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 also includes new offences against child prostitution and coercion to perform sex work. The Queensland Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath stated that “sex workers should not have to [...]
India Supreme Court reserves 1/3 of seats in Bar Association committee for women
India’s Supreme Court (SC) reserved Thursday one-third of the seats in the executive committee of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) for women. The SCBA is an Indian bar association comprising practicing lawyers who work in the Supreme Court of India. The SC held that the SCBA has to establish reservations and guidelines for its [...]