A Minnesota district court sentenced former police officer Kim Potter to two years in prison on Friday. Potter, the officer responsible for killing Daunte Wright last April, was sentenced on the charge of first-degree manslaughter. Convicted in December for first- and second-degree manslaughter, Potter was sentenced only on the more serious charge per Minnesota law. [...]

North Korean refugees in Russia are at risk of being forcibly returned to North Korea, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Thursday. Many North Koreans travel to Russia for work, but they are kept under surveillance by North Korean officials while they are there. A North Korean worker, Choe Kum Chol, evaded his minders with the [...]

A Florida legislative committee advanced a bill Thursday that would outlaw certain discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida schools. HB 1557, called the Parental Rights in Education bill, would prohibit school teachers or third parties from introducing classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for kindergarten through third grade if that [...]

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) announced their intention Thursday to take the “government of Canada to court” and challenge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act (“the Act”). Invoking a national emergency provides the federal government with sweeping powers to, among other provisions, tackle the ongoing [...]

A federal jury convicted former Los Angeles Angels communications director Ethan Kay Thursday of conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and with “knowingly and intentionally” distributing the fentanyl that killed pitcher Tyler Skaggs. The jury deliberated for less than 90 minutes. Skaggs was found dead in a hotel room on July 1, 2019, during a road trip [...]

A Pennsylvania man was arrested Thursday on charges alleging that he tortured a victim in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2015, after a superseding indictment was returned on Tuesday in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. The grand jury charged Ross Roggio, 53, of Stroudsburg with directing and participating in the systematic torture of an [...]

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews on Thursday announced that the Australian government intends to list the entirety of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas as a terrorist organization under the Australian criminal code.  Founded in 1987, Hamas was originally a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar Hassan al-Bannain in 1928. [...]

Law students and lawyers in Afghanistan are filing reports with JURIST on the situation there after the Taliban takeover. Here, a Staff Correspondent for JURIST in Kabul reports on how surging poverty and hunger is forcing destitute families to sell their own children. For privacy and security reasons, we are withholding our Correspondent’s name. The [...]

Ian Profiri is JURIST’s Chief Correspondent for Canada. He files this dispatch from Calgary. To say that it’s been a busy week in the Canadian legal world is an understatement. For the first time in its history, the Emergencies Act was invoked by the Prime Minister, recognizing that policing efforts to date in the capital [...]

The New York Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that former US President Donald Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. will be required to attend depositions regarding an investigation launched last year into their family business practices. The judge also rejected an attempt by the Trumps to freeze the New York Attorney General’s [...]