California’s fight over same-sex marriage is headed to a federal appeals court, after the state’s top elected officials declined to defend a voter-approved ban that a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional last month. A Sweeping Ruling, and a Governor Who Won’t Appeal It Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in August that Proposition…
Russian police detained hundreds of demonstrators in Moscow this week, as opposition activists staged unauthorized protests against their government’s military intervention in Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. A Fast-Moving Crisis The protests came immediately on the heels of a formal vote by Russia’s Federation Council authorizing President Vladimir Putin to deploy Russian armed forces in Ukraine —…
The Senate has moved Trade Promotion Authority one step closer to becoming law this week, but as the fight over so-called “fast track” trade legislation shifts to the House of Representatives, opponents are increasingly pointing to a recent World Trade Organization ruling on meat labeling as a warning of what’s really at stake. A Canary…
In the closing weeks of the Obama administration, supporters of imprisoned Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier have found an unexpected new ally: the very federal prosecutor whose office secured his conviction four decades ago. A Prosecutor’s Change of Heart James H. Reynolds, the former U.S. attorney for Iowa who oversaw the government’s prosecution and…
French voters head to the polls this weekend for the first round of what’s being called the country’s most unpredictable presidential election in decades — a contest unfolding under heightened security just days after a gunman opened fire on police along Paris’s famed Champs-Élysées, killing one officer. An Eleven-Candidate Field, and a System Under Strain…
In a Los Angeles classroom, mostly freshman actors are rehearsing a scene few teenagers should ever need to practice: what to do when immigration agents show up. Members of a student theater group called Colores Unidos are performing videotaped skits playing both ICE agents and terrified immigrants, preparing themselves and their community for a wave…
Indigenous marchers converged on Quito this week, capping weeks of mobilization against Ecuador’s newly passed water law — legislation that Indigenous organizations argue prioritizes mining companies’ access to water over the rights of the communities who have depended on those same water sources for generations. A Law Years in the Making, Passed Over Objection The…
Human rights organizations are demanding urgent action from Papua New Guinea’s government following the killing of a young woman accused of sorcery — the latest in a pattern of brutal, sometimes fatal violence targeting women blamed for deaths or illnesses in their communities. A Killing That Drew International Outrage The case that has galvanized international…
A new United Nations report on Syria’s civil war has documented war crimes and crimes against humanity committed not just by government forces, but by non-state armed groups as well — a rare instance of the UN’s independent investigators assigning direct culpability to virtually every major party controlling territory inside the country. Starvation as a…
Thousands of Mexicans have taken to the streets and flooded social media over the past month, protesting a sweeping telecommunications reform bill that critics say would hand the government unprecedented power to surveil internet users and censor online content — transforming a law originally pitched as pro-competition reform into what digital rights advocates are calling…