This September, Moscow is due for a city council election, and uproar has already begun regarding election authorities barring several candidates opposed to the dominant pro-Kremlin party from running. One such candidate is Alexei Navalny, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin who attempted to run against Putin in last year’s presidential election. Then, too, he was barred from the race. Navalny spoke out in support of large-scale protests taking place in Moscow last weekend, and on Wednesday was detained by police while out jogging. Yesterday, his spokesperson announced he had…
Puerto Rico’s governor Ricardo Rosselló is expected to step down from his position at the end of the week, the result of massive public outcry over the “Chatgate” scandal involving homophobic and misogynistic messages. However, the question of who will replace Rosselló is an open one, as further resignations and rejections have complicated Puerto Rico’s chain of succession. The first in line for the governor’s seat would normally be the Secretary of State. But Luis Rivera Marín, who held that post, has already stepped down in the wake of Chatgate,…
US Attorney General William Barr announced on Thursday that the federal government will resume executing death-row inmates, a practice halted since 2003. The death sentence is rare in federal cases, with only three executions total having taken place since 1988. At the state level, the death penalty has been made illegal in 21 jurisdictions, and President Obama ordered a federal moratorium after a botched execution in the state of Oklahoma in 2014. Barr’s order will end that moratorium, with the main change being a switch from the three-drug cocktail formerly…
Boris Johnson’s first priority on ascending to the position of Prime Minister seems to have been purging the ranks of all those tied to his political opponents. A total of seventeen ministers were either fired from their positions or resigned on Wednesday. These included Johnson’s rival candidate in the PM race, Jeremy Hunt, who resigned rather than accept a demotion. The Trade and Defense Secretaries, Liam Fox and Penny Mordaunt, who supported Hunt in the contest, were also given the boot. Johnson’s new administration has been filled with Brexit hardliners,…
Food delivery service DoorDash came under fire in recent months for its practice of skimming tips from independent-contractor delivery drivers, a practice it may now change according to statements from the CEO. The service operates through an app which guarantees drivers a specific payment amount for each delivery, depending on region, driving distance, and other factors. On the customer end, a delivery fee is applied atop the cost of whatever food they ordered, but there is also an option to tip. However, DoorDash would not pay those tips to the…
An agreement was reached on Friday in a case of age discrimination between Google and numerous job seekers, settling out of court for $11 million. The suit was initially brought by a woman, Cheryl Fillekes, who is over 40 years old and who had been interviewed four times over seven years, and claimed that she had never been hired despite her qualifictions due to her age. Two hundred and twenty-seven job candidates later joined her class-action suit. Google denies having discriminated against these candidates, stating that their aptitude for the…
China’s Huawei Technologies, the second-largest smartphone maker in the world, has been accused in a Washington Post report of setting up 3G wireless infrastructure within North Korea. A leak of documents from inside Huawei reveals that the company sent a team of staff into North Korea to work on “a variety of projects,” likely violating US sanctions. Huawei has already fallen under intense scrutiny from the US Justice and Commerce Departments in the past for violating sanctions on Iran, as well as for its suspected involvement in Chinese espionage. The…
As votes have been tallied in Japanese parliamentary elections, it appears Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government has fallen below the supermajority threshold needed to pursue their plans of changing the country’s constitution. Abe’s coalition, consisting of Abe’s own Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito party, previously held a supermajority in the lower house of the Japanese government. They sought the same control in the upper house, the House of Councillors, to allow consitutional reforms to be pushed through. The current election had 124 seats in contention, of which the LDP…
The British ministers for justice and finance have now both announced they plan to resign from the government in the case that the next Prime Minister pursues a no-deal Brexit. Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and Justice Secretary David Gauke made their announcements this month in the face of a contest between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt for leadership of the Conservative Party. Both lead candidate Johnson and his opponent Hunt have made strong statements to the effect that the UK must leave the EU on the current Brexit…
A Neo-Nazi group was raided by Italian special forces Monday, with police discovering a massive cache of military weapons ranging from assault rifles to an air-to-air missile. The extremist group in question was under investigation for having sent members to the Ukraine to fight against the separatists in that country. Previous raids found a variety of pro-fascist relics dating back to WW2. Of the three members of the neo-fascist group who were arrested, one was identified as a former customs inspector, whose position was likely used to smuggle the weapons…