The US House of Representatives voted 417-1 Wednesday to pass legislation supporting Hong Kong protesters. Th Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act aims to place sanctions on individuals who have committed human rights violations in Hong Kong. It would also require an annual review by the State Department to ensure that Hong Kong maintains [...]
London’s high court on Wednesday granted Royal Mail an injunction preventing the first national postal strike in more than a decade. Members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) overwhelmingly voted last month in favor of action, with 97 percent of members voting in favor and a turnout of nearly 76 percent. The vote came in [...]
Turkey announced Monday that they had begun repatriating captured foreign ISIS militants, beginning with the deportation of an American citizen and a Danish national. Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu announced last week that Turkey would begin sending militants back to their home countries, even those whose citizenship has been stripped. The process of deporting numerous [...]
The US Senate on Tuesday unanimously passed the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act, which makes certain types of animal cruelty a federal felony. The bill expands upon a 2010 law criminalizing the creation or distribution of videos showing animals being crushed, burned or tortured. The underlying acts of cruelty had not yet been [...]
Israel’s highest court on Tuesday upheld the deportation of Omar Shakir, a US Citizen and local director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Israel. Shakir is being removed under a 2017 law allowing the government to block entry to supporters of Israel boycott movements such as boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Israel used the law [...]
A bill introduced in the House of Representatives on Tuesday would authorize a referendum on Puerto Rican statehood, to be voted on by the commonwealth’s citizens on November 3, 2020. Such a referendum would mark the third time Puerto Ricans have voted on statehood since 2012. Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative Jenniffer González-Colón says that statehood [...]
The Brazilian Senate on Wednesday approvedthe final amendments to a sweeping pension reform plan, a day after the main text of the bill was approved. The bill creates a minimum retirement age of 65 for men and 62 for women. The average retirement ages in Brazil before were 56 and 53, respectively. It also increases [...]
A Massachusetts judge on Monday ruled that the state’s temporary ban on the sale of vaping products can stand. However, the state has until October 28 to correct what the judge saw as unlawful aspects of the ban. Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Douglas Wilkins denied a request from Vapor Technology Association (VTA), an industry [...]
The US House of Representatives on Tuesday approved the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, aimed at protecting the civil rights of Hong Kong residents. The bill would end Hong Kong’s special trading status with the US unless the State Department conducted an annual review ensuring that the authorities were respecting human rights and [...]
A California jury on Wednesday cleared Johnson & Johnson of charges that the company’s talcum powder gave a woman mesothelioma. The verdict was granted in a retrial of claims over which a mistrial was declared in September of 2018. 60-year-old Carolyn Weirick and her wife Elvira Escudero claimed that Weirick’s mesothelioma was caused by the [...]
