A jury Friday found 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of murder in connection with a shooting last year during a night of protests related to the Black Lives Matter movement in which Rittenhouse killed two people and injured a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The protests had followed the shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot [...]
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators Thursday introduced a joint resolution to block a White House agreement to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia. The group includes Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and the resolution aims to stop the sale of 280 medium-range air-to-air missiles, 596 missile launchers, and other weapons, [...]
In a coordinated action, the United States and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions Monday on several high-ranking Nicaraguan officials in response to that nation’s November 7 presidential election, widely regarded as a sham election. The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued an announcement that it was imposing sanctions on the Public Ministry of Nicaragua, [...]
The United States government Friday imposed sanctions on four Eritrean entities and two individuals in connection with the increasingly dire humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia due to the ongoing military conflict. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued a statement condemning Eritrean interference in the Ethiopian fighting. President Biden signed an executive order [...]
The North Dakota House of Representatives Thursday passed a bill that would ban state-level government-ordered COVID vaccine mandates. The bill would not apply to jails, state hospitals, or higher education institutions but to all other state entities. The bill would prohibit those entities from requiring proof of vaccination, proof of the presence of COVID antibodies, [...]
Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit Thursday on behalf of a transgender boy prevented by Tennessee law from joining the boys’ golf team at his high school. The suit challenges S.B. 228, which requires that a middle or high school student’s gender, for purposes of interscholastic athletics, be determined by the student’s assigned sex at [...]
United Nations human rights experts Thursday called on both Saudi Arabia and Viet Nam to “crack down” on human trafficking following reports of women and girls recruited in Viet Nam to serve as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. The experts noted that traffickers “target[] Vietnamese women and girls living in poverty” because of their vulnerability. Girls [...]
The US and human rights groups Monday condemned the conviction of a teenage boy in Cambodia over social media messages insulting the ruling party. Sovann Chhay, who is sixteen and on the autism spectrum, was arrested after making the posts on Facebook and Telegram. He was charged with incitement and insulting public officials. These charges [...]
The Colorado Supreme Court Monday approved a congressional redistricting plan drawn by the state’s new Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission, despite objections that the new map dilutes Hispanic voting power. Redistricting power had been held by the state General Assembly, but during three of the last four redistricting cycles, the Assembly was unable to come to [...]
The Supreme Court denied a request Friday to block a Maine rule that requires health care workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. On August 12, Maine health officials revised the list of diseases against which health care workers must be vaccinated, adding COVID-19 to the list. Workers who have a valid medical exemption are not [...]
