Apr
17
2013
Dublin, Ireland
Ireland, a famously conservative country with a government dominated by the center-right, has taken a step toward legalizing same-sex marriage, following several other Catholic nations into what some say is belated equality – and others claim is murky legal and moral territory.
Ireland’s Constitutional Convention, a body set up by the government to propose wide-ranging changes to Ireland’s Constitution, voted Sunday, with 79 percent in favor of extending marriage rights to same sex couples.
Ireland’s minister …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
HAVANA, Cuba, April 13 (acn) Seventy one British parliamentarians have written John Kerry, Secretary of State of the United States, urging him to grant entry visas to two Cuban women, Adriana Perez and Olga Salanueva, so they can visit their respective husbands serving sentences in that country.
Gerardo Hernandez, incarcerated in the USP Victorville, and Rene Gonzalez, now under supervised release in Florida after serving his sentence, are two of the five Cubans that were unfairly …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
NAIROBI, Kenya — Tens of thousands of Maasai people in northern Tanzania, under a new government plan, face eviction from their homes and a ban from the land their cattle have grazed for generations.
Tanzania says it will designate as a “wildlife corridor” a 600-square-mile patch of land next to the popular tourist attractions of the Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area.
The designation bans pastoralist Maasai herders — known for their red tartan-print blankets and …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
North Dakota’s Republican governor Jack Dalrymple has signed legislation outlawing abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the disputed premise that at that point a foetus can feel pain.
The law is the latest among a raft of measures passed in North Dakota this session that are meant to challenge the US supreme court’s 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that legalised abortion up until viability, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.
Abortion-rights campaigners have called the …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
(Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Wednesday limited the ability of police to take involuntary blood samples from suspected drunken drivers without a search warrant.
The court ruled that a blood test administered on a Missouri driver without a warrant violated his right to be free from unreasonable search and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Missouri state police administered the test after the driver, Tyler McNeely, refused to submit to a breathalyzer test.
Justice …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
(Reuters) – The Swiss government is considering a possible solution to a long-running dispute with U.S. authorities over Swiss banks accused of helping wealthy Americans evade billions of dollars of tax.
A source familiar with the talks has told Reuters the two sides have agreed an outline for a deal that would divide over 300 Swiss banks according to the extent they had helped U.S. clients hide money, to determine how they are dealt with.
A Swiss …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has limited the ability of foreign victims of human rights abuses to use American courts to seek accountability and monetary damages for their suffering.
The justices unanimously agreed Wednesday to shut down a lawsuit filed by Nigerians against Royal Dutch Petroleum, or Shell Oil, over claims that the company was complicit in murder and other abuses committed by the Nigerian government against its citizens in the oil-rich Niger Delta …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
Jonathan Cohn’s devastating piece on the inadequacies of American day care in The New Republic does exactly what good muckraking investigative journalism should do—it makes you ask why on earth we let this continue. As Cohn says, other countries (notably France) have safe, well-regulated, subsidized, affordable daycare for all. In contrast, daycare in the U.S. is expensive ($15,000 a year per infant on average) and of shockingly low quality. Child care workers are paid less …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
“If we could appoint King Solomon, who was the first domestic relations judge, as special master we could do it,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy during Tuesday’s oral argument in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. “But we can’t do it.”
In family cases, though, even Solomon was no Solomon. Faced with two competing claims of maternity, Solomon threatened to hack the baby in half with a sword.
There were no swords in the chamber Tuesday, but …
Read more
Apr
17
2013
A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn’t alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in “a startling show of force,” as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a “phalanx” of …
Read more
