Budapest Power grab: In the face of mass protests and international condemnation, the Hungarian parliament has overwhelmingly passed 15 pages of amendments to the country’s 1-year-old constitution that practically abolish all judicial checks on the government. The amendments retroactively restore a number of controversial laws that were passed by the right-wing Fidesz government but subsequently ruled unconstitutional by the courts. […]
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Beijing Mass arrests: In one of the biggest crackdowns on civil society groups in decades, Chinese authorities have detained and questioned at least 238 lawyers and human rights activists over the past two weeks. At least 20 activists remain incarcerated, and the whereabouts of six of them are unclear. Maya Wang, a researcher with Human Rights. Watch, said those still […]
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Suddenly everyone wants to be low-caste, said Badri Narayan. It used to be considered an extreme disadvantage to be in one of India’s oppressed castes or indigenous tribes. But decades of affirmative action and quota systems have changed all that. Now, many lower-middle castes are agitating to be reclassified as “more backward,” in effect “struggling to move down the ladder […]
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Russian orphanages are a scandal, said Jennifer Rankin. State institutions house nearly 400,000 children, a population larger than many cities. But less than one third of these children are actually orphans. Many “fall into the system when their parents, often fighting a losing battle with alcohol or drugs,” lose their parental rights. Even more of them—nearly half the total—have disabilities, […]
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On March 26th, 2013, United States President Barack Obama signed the H.R. 933 GMO bill into law that was written in part by the very billion-dollar corporation that will benefit directly from the legislation. Pres. Obama inked his name to H.R. 933, a continuing resolution spending bill approved in Congress days earlier. Buried 78 pages within the bill exists a provision […]
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Event Type: Conferences and Workshops When: 16 October 2015 to 18 October 2015 Where: Reykjavik, Iceland More information: http://arcticcircle.org The 2015 Arctic Circle Assembly is due to convene in the coming weeks. The Arctic Circle is the largest global gathering on the Arctic. It is attended by heads of state and governments, ministers, members of parliament, officials, experts, scientists, […]
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