US President Joe Biden signed two health care-focused executive orders Thursday seeking to reopen the enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), strengthen Medicaid and protect reproductive health care access. The first executive order directors the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to open a special enrollment period for the ACA and Medicaid [...]
Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) called Tuesday for an inquiry into the killing of Ethiopian journalist Dawit Kebede. Individuals found Kebede and his friend, Bereket Berhe, shot dead in a car on January 19 in Mekelle, the capital of the Ethiopian region of Tigray. Kebede was a journalist [...]
The Russian parliament unanimously ratified a bill Wednesday to extend Russia’s Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the US. Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden had agreed Tuesday to extend the treaty. The New START treaty was signed in April 2010 and entered into force in February 2011. It is the [...]
A near-total ban on abortion in Poland took effect Wednesday, following a controversial decision by the Constitutional Court. The Constitionla Court ruled in October that a 1993 law allowing abortion in cases of severe and irreversible fetal abnormalities was unconstitutional. Prior to the ruling, access to abortion was already limited, with just 1,100 procedures performed [...]
The Dutch Minister of Justice and Security, Ferdinand Grapperhaus, told press on Tuesday that arrested rioters of the government-imposed curfew will face prompt and harsh prosecution. On Monday night, 184 rioters were arrested and many more fined, with the fine for breaching curfew being 95 euros. Monday was the third day of protests in the [...]
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a series of executive actions focused on combating climate change. According to a White House statement, the orders will empower American businesses and workers to lead a “clean energy revolution that achieves a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 and puts the United States on an irreversible path [...]
Benjamin Crump, civil rights lawyer and the attorney for George Floyd, the Minneapolis man whose May killing by police unleashed a wave of protests across the US and around the world, told an international inquiry Monday that Floyd had in fact narrated his own death on screen. Crump was speaking to the International Commission of Inquiry [...]
The Thai Senate on Monday voted to amend the criminal code by allowing early term abortions. The criminal code previously criminalized women who had abortions, either performed by others or by the women themselves, with penalties of up to three years in prison and a 6,000 Baht fine. However, last February the Constitutional Court ruled [...]
The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday suspended the controversial Bombay High Court judgment which held that there had to be “skin to skin contact” for an offense to constitute sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POSCO). The stay was ordered by Chief Justice Sharad Bobde after Attorney General KK [...]
Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a motion to vote on the constitutionality of the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The motion was brought to the floor by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who raised two objections to the trial going forward. First, he noted that the Constitution says impeachment only applies to the President, Vice-President, [...]
