“Haiti opened a new political chapter Thursday with the installation of a transitional council tasked to pick a new prime minister and prepare for eventual presidential elections, in hopes of quelling spiraling gang violence that has killed thousands in the Caribbean country. Ariel Henry, the prime minister who had been locked out of the country for the past couple of months due to the violence, cleared the way for the transition by presenting his resignation in a letter signed in Los Angeles. … The council was officially sworn in at the National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince early Thursday as the pop of sporadic gunfire erupted nearby, prompting some officials to look around the room. The council had been urged to seek a safer venue because gangs have launched daily attacks in the area.” (04/26/24)
“Five months after a jury convicted them on dozens of prostitution and money laundering charges, a federal judge acquitted former executives of the controversial classified advertising website Backpage.com on most of the counts lodged against them. Backpage founder Michael Lacey and two executives Scott Spear and John Brunst were convicted in November after five years of prosecution and two lengthy trials — the first of which was declared a mistrial in 2021, and the second of which came close — over their roles in the Craigslist copycat. … Federal prosecutors spent two months during trial last year trying to convince a jury that Backpage executives knew of and actively facilitated the promotion of prostitution on their site by encouraging sex workers to post ads and helping them get around language filters to avoid police detection.” (04/24/24)
“Even as Ukraine works to get arms from a huge U.S. aid package to the front line, its government is seeking to reverse the drain of its potential soldiers, announcing that men of conscription age will no longer be able to renew passports from outside Ukraine. The Cabinet of Ministers said late Wednesday that men between 18 and 60 years old who are deemed fit for military service will only be able to replace their passports inside Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians have fled the country since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, mostly to neighboring European countries. The European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat, says 4.3 million Ukrainians are living in EU countries, 860,000 of them men 18 years of age or older. … Oleksandr Pavlichenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, said the measure was a violation of individual rights — and also unlikely to succeed in getting Ukrainian men to return home from abroad.” (04/26/24)
“The US Supreme Court on Thursday wrestled with how to define the scope of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution as Donald Trump fights charges of interfering in the 2020 election. During oral arguments the court sought to draw the boundaries between a president’s personal and official acts, suggesting the matter might need to be sent back to lower courts to evaluate the nature of Trump’s actions. Such a move could further delay one of the most serious criminal trials against Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential elections in November. A decision is expected before the end of the high court’s term, typically in late June. Trump has argued for a broad interpretation of immunity, saying presidents may only be indicted if previously impeached and convicted by Congress for similar crimes — even in some of the most extreme circumstances.” (04/25/24)
“Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group fired anti-tank missiles and artillery shells at an Israeli military convoy in a disputed area along the border, killing an Israeli civilian, the group and Israel’s military has said. Hezbollah said that its fighters ambushed the convoy shortly before midnight on Thursday, destroying two vehicles. The Israeli military said the ambush wounded an Israeli civilian doing infrastructure work, and that he later died of his wounds. Low-intensity fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border has repeatedly threatened to boil over as Israel has targeted senior Hezbollah militants in recent months. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced on both sides of the border.” (04/26/24)
“Emory University condemned anti-Israel ‘activists’ who are ‘not members of our community’ for disrupting campus on Thursday, as police responded to a massive crowd swarming the quad. … While authorities have not released numbers on how many people were detained or arrested during Thursday’s protests on campus, video shows the tense moments where officials can be seen using zip ties to detain people, tear gas, tasers, and the sound of rubber bullets being used to disperse the crowd. It appeared to be a mix of both anti-Israel demonstrators and ‘Stop Cop City’ supporters – a slogan used in an ongoing effort to stop Atlanta Police from building the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a training facility for police and first responders scheduled to open later this year.” (04/25/24)
“The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday revived Obama-era net neutrality rules, setting up another clash with the telecom industry and Republicans. The 3-2 vote along partisan lines is a victory for Democrats, who have pushed for this type of regulation for the last two decades and say it’s necessary for consumer protection, fair competition and national security. The rules, which prevent [sic] broadband providers from blocking and throttling consumers’ internet traffic, were repealed in 2017 during the Trump era. The order also reclassifies broadband as a telecom service, as the 2015 rules did, expanding the agency’s authority to regulate internet networks. An earlier version of the rules was struck down by a court in 2014.” (04/25/24)
“Workers at auto plants in the South should be free to unionize without pressure from employers or anti-union governors, acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su said Thursday, even as some southern states pass laws to inhibit organized labor. ‘That choice belongs to the worker, free from intervention, either by the employer or by politicians, free from retaliation and threats,’ Su told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday in Atlanta. ‘And what we are seeing is that workers who were thought to be too vulnerable to assert that right are doing it, and they’re doing it here in the South.’ The United Auto Workers union vowed a broad campaign to organize southern auto assembly plants after winning lucrative new contracts in a confrontation with Detroit’s automakers. Last week, 73% of those voting at a Volkswagen AG plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee chose to join the UAW.” (04/25/24)
“The New York state Court of Appeals has overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction. The court, in a 4-3 ruling, ruled that the judge in the New York County trial prejudiced Weinstein with improper rulings, including allowing women to testify about allegations that were not part of the case. The court — the highest court in New York state’s judicial system — ruled that a new trial must take place. … Weinstein also went to trial in Los Angeles, where he was convicted in December 2022 of rape. That conviction means that Weinstein will remain in prison even if a new New York trial gets established.” (04/25/24)
“Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the labor market continues to hold up despite higher interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve in its bid to curb inflation. The Labor Department reported Thursday that unemployment claims for the week ending April 20 fell by 5,000 to 207,000 from 212,000 the previous week. That’s the fewest since mid-February. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out some of the weekly up-and-downs, ticked down by 1,250 to 213,250.” (04/25/24)
