KANO, Nigeria: A popular Nigerian social media influencer known for outspoken political views was killed at his home in the northern city of Kano, his family and a rights group said Wednesday.
Ibrahim Khalil Dan Shagamu was found dead with his throat slit in his home late on Tuesday by friends and neighbors who scaled the fence after he failed to answer the door since Monday.
His death came as the election campaign season in Africa’s most populous nation swings into gear ahead of the January 16 presidential vote.
Amnesty International strongly condemns the killing of a social media political commentator Ibrahim Khalil Dan Shagamu whose body was found today in a pool of blood at his home in Kano. He was brutally slaughtered after being overpowered by his killers.
The Nigerian authorities… pic.twitter.com/tVfxwpjEnU
— Amnesty International Nigeria (@AmnestyNigeria) September 9, 2026
The 57-year-old father of six, popularly known as Dan Shagamu, was found “slaughtered with severe deep cuts to his head”, Aisha Sharu Lawan, his elder sister, told reporters in her home.
“It was a grisly sight. His two mobile phones were missing,” Lawan, 67, said.
Dan Shagamu, with a combined following of hundreds of thousands on Facebook and TikTok, was known for his aggressive videos in the Hausa language critical of government on local political and social issues.
It was not clear whether his death was linked to his political views, but Lawan said they suspected foul play.
“His friend said he had a disagreement with some people who threatened to kill him,” Lawan said, calling for investigation and prosecution of the killers.
Dan Shagamu was reporter for a state-funded local radio station before he resigned and became active on social media, building a huge fan base.
Amnesty International condemned his killing saying in a statement that he was “brutally slaughtered after being overpowered by his killers.”
Dan Shagamu’s killing came after election campaigning commenced last month.
Nigerian elections are usually tainted with violence, with politicians recruiting thugs to intimidate opponents and silence dissenting political views.
The paid thugs cause chaos during rallies and at election booths to help their candidates have an edge over opponents.
“As the elections approach, we continue to receive disturbing reports of politically related threats to life and intimidation,” Amnesty said.
TRAVELLERS face another day of chaos across UK airports today following a major tech outage cancelling flights yesterday.
Thousands of passengers were hit by flight cancellations and delays yesterday due to an air traffic control issue emerging around 1pm.
People reported being stuck on planes on the tarmac for hours and many travellers are currently stranded abroad with new flights home only available next week.
NATS has now warned that delays are expected to continue as it tries to “clear a backlog of flights” – but here is all you need to know if you have been impacted.
Contact your airline immediately and ask to be rebooked onto the next available flight.
Airlines must provide you with this option. Unfortunately, in a situation like this where so many flights have been cancelled, it may be that they offer you a flight well into the next few days.
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You do not have to accept this. If you can find an alternative flight with a different airline that will get you to your destination sooner, you have the right to either have the airline book you onto this or book it yourself.
Use a credit card, keep all receipts and claim it back from your airline. In situations like this, the last thing you should do is simply get a refund if you have no alternative means of getting to your destination.
If you do this, your airline no longer has any duty of care and does not have to get you home.
Only request a refund if you are happy for the airline to no longer have any responsibility for your travel options. – Lisa Minot, Head of Travel
You will likely be contacted by your airline directly if your flight has been affected by the air traffic control meltdown.
If you are already at the airport or on your way there, the best thing to do is speak to someone on the ground.
Phones will be ringing off the hook right now so the check in desk or your airline help desk is your best bet.
Anyone who is at home and has not been provided with a satisfactory alternative flight or the option to a refund should either call the airline via the customer services number or make contact via the live chat option on the website.
Some airlines, like British Airways, will allow you to rebook within their airline app.
If the changes are complicated, however, phone or in-person is best. – Sophie Swietochowski, Assistant Travel Editor
If you have a holiday package booked, you have more protection than flight-only bookings.
This is because they are ATOL protected, which means your money is safeguarded by a a UK financial protection scheme (often needed for when holiday companies go bust).
If your flight is cancelled, your tour operator must offer an alternative flight or replacement holiday.
If neither work you, then you must be given a full refund – Kara Godfrey, Deputy Travel Editor
No. Airlines are only required to give you compensation if the delay or cancellation is the airline’s fault, as in a technical failure on a plane or issues with crew.
In this situation, where ATC is the reason for the chaos, there is unfortunately no compensation due.
Check your insurance policy to see if you have any redress if you have incurred additional costs like missing a concert or unable to pick up car hire. You may be able to claim for that.
Generally for delays, if an airline looks after you or provides you with food and drink or hotels, you cannot claim for the same costs against your travel insurance. – Lisa Minot, Head of Travel
If your flight has been cancelled strictly as a result of yesterday’s incident, you will not be entitled to compensation.
This is because the situation is deemed to be outside of the airline’s control and falls under the category of extraordinary circumstances.
Airlines do, however, still have a duty of care to their passengers and anyone experiencing delays of between two to four hours will be entitled to food and drinks vouchers.
These are usually handed out according to the distance you are flying.
For example if your trip is short haul then you are entitled to vouchers once the delay reaches two hours.
The delay must be at least three hours for mid haul or four hours for long haul.
If you are stranded and need to stay in a hotel, this also falls under duty of care and the airline should assist you in this.
As mentioned above, if you end up paying for anything yourself, you must keep receipts so that you can claim this back. – Sophie Swietochowski, Assistant Travel Editor
This is strictly down to what your insurance policy says. It really depends on the level of policy you paid for, so it’s worth checking the small print.
You’ll need to be covered for things like delay, travel disruption, cancellations and missed connections.
If you went for the cheaper option when booking your policy, it’s likely there may be some holes in your cover.
Always make sure you take out travel insurance and check the details before signing on the dotted line – instances like this are why it’s worth protecting yourself. – Caroline McGuire, Head of Travel (Digital)
It depends what you booked and how.
For a missed concert, theatre show or other event, check your travel insurance to see if it is covered because of the delay or cancellation – you may be able to claim.
The same applies for car hire or missed accommodation expenses but only if your travel insurance policy includes such disruption.
If you paid by credit card and the value is over £100 it may be worth calling your credit card provider and seeing if you can claim under Section 75 of the consumer credit act. – Lisa Minot, Head of Travel
If you’re due to jet off in the coming days and have not yet been contacted by your airline, take this as a good sign.
The specific issue that resulted in yesterday’s chaos was fixed within four hours and many airports have said that they are operating as normal today.
Despite this quick fix, yesterday still saw over 1000 cancellations across UK airports which has had a dramatic knock on effect that could continue for days.
Keep a look out for any changes to your flight and act immediately if a cancellation arises.
If your flight is not cancelled, be warned that it could be busier than anticipated, with airlines struggling to find space for passengers who are trying to reach their destination after a cancellation. – Sophie Swietochowski, Assistant Travel Editor
HUNDREDS of flights have been grounded across the UK following a major ATC failure.
Here is everything you need to know if your flight has been delayed or cancelled.
Airports across the UK are experiencing huge delays and cancellations with passengers reporting being stuck parked at gates due to Air Traffic Control outages.
It comes after NATS experienced a technical issue just after 1pm today according to multiple sources, halting departures at UK airports.
NATS stated: “We have identified that the issue was in our flight processing system.
“Our engineers are on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible.
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“We recognise the ongoing disruption to travel, for which we sincerely apologise.
“Flights are still departing and airspace is open, but recovery will take some time. We will provide further updates as soon as possible.
“Passengers should check the status of their flight with their airline. We will provide further updates as soon as we have confirmed information, at http://www.nats.aero and on X at @NATS.”
Flights are being impacted across UK airports London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Manchester.
More than 50 flights departing London Heathrow have already been cancelled.
Manchester Airport has advised passengers to “check the latest status of their flight with their airline” amid the turmoil caused by the air traffic control failure.
The airport said it would “Continue to monitor the situation and share further updates as more information becomes available.”
At Luton Airport a Ryanair flight to Dublin scheduled to leave at 4.10PM is now estimated to leave at 7PM.
And a Jet2 flight to Alicante scheduled to leave at 4.25PM, is now estimated to leave at 6PM.
Airlines have a duty of care they must offer passengers affected by delays or cancellations.
The Civil Aviation Authority states: “If your flight is delayed, and UK261 applies to it, your airline must look after you while you are delayed.
“This includes providing you with food and drink based on how long your delay is, and accommodation if you are delayed overnight.”
If your airline doesn’t provide these and you end up paying for food, a hotel or transport yourself, keep all receipts so you can claim back reasonable expenses later.
If your flight is cancelled, they must also offer a refund or an alternative flight, even with another airline.
If you accept a refund, they no longer need to offer you any additional forms of care, such as hotels or food vouchers.
Airlines are not required to offer any compensation if the situation is deemed “extraordinary circumstances”.
This can mean anything out of the airline’s control like extreme weather – or air traffic control failures.
As a result, the current NATS technical outage is classed as an “extraordinary circumstance”.
In the last major NATS outage in 2023, travellers did not receive compensation.
The Civil Aviation Authority revealed that around 700,000 passengers were impacted by the last outage.
This included 300,000 people by cancellations, 95,000 by delays of over three hours and a further 300,000 by shorter delays.
A look at your rights if a flight is delayed or cancelled, when your entitled to compensation and if your travel insurance can cover the costs.
What are my rights if my flight is cancelled or delayed?
Under UK law, airlines have to provide compensation if your flight arrives at its destination more than three hours late.
If you’re flying to or from the UK, your airline must let you choose a refund or an alternative flight.
You will be able to get your money back for the part of your ticket that you haven’t used yet.
So if you booked a return flight and the outbound leg is cancelled, you can get the full cost of the return ticket refunded.
But if travelling is essential, then your airline has to find you an alternative flight. This could even be with another airline.
When am I not entitled to compensation?
The airline doesn’t have to give you a refund if the flight was cancelled due to reasons beyond their control, such as extreme weather.
Disruptions caused by things like extreme weather, airport or air traffic control employee strikes or other ‘extraordinary circumstances’ are not eligible for compensation.
Some airlines may stretch the definition of “extraordinary circumstances” but you can challenge them through the aviation regulator the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
Will my insurance cover me if my flight is cancelled?
If you can’t claim compensation directly through the airline, your travel insurance may refund you.
Policies vary so you should check the small print, but a delay of eight to 12 hours will normally mean you qualify for some money from your insurer.
Remember to get written confirmation of your delay from the airport as your insurer will need proof.
If your flight is cancelled entirely, you’re unlikely to be covered by your insurance.
Two Muslim female journalists allege they were detained and brutally assaulted by police in India’s capital, Delhi. Police have denied the allegations, claiming the journalists were brought to the station over an illegal parking dispute.
Published On 4 Sep 20264 Sep 2026
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The White House has unveiled five arcade-style games to promote Trump’s ‘MAGA’ agenda, sparking backlash over the misuse of taxpayer money and the dehumanising portrayal of migrants and deportees.
Published On 4 Sep 20264 Sep 2026
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As many as 20 million children in 21 countries have experienced online sexual abuse or exploitation each year, according to new findings from the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF.
More than one in five children aged 12 to 17 in countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe have been targeted on digital platforms, according to the UNICEF report released on Thursday.
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Researchers surveyed 21,000 children aged 12 to 17 who used the internet across 21 countries between 2020 and 2021, and then again between 2024 and 2025. They also conducted in-depth interviews with 100 young people who have experienced childhood abuse.
Social media facilitated more than half of the abuse cases, according to UNICEF, which cautioned that figures could be inaccurate due to underreporting by children. Less than 1 per cent of all abusive incidents were reported to authorities, the researchers found.
Last week, US social media giant Meta agreed to a landmark $18bn settlement in a major US federal case accusing the company of endangering children. Meta has faced an avalanche of legal cases this year, most arguing that it has deliberately designed its platforms to be addictive and that they have harmed children. The company has now agreed to make major changes to the features of its social media platforms.
The report estimated that in the periods studied, more than 15 million children were exposed to unwanted sexual content, nine million were asked to engage in sexual conversations or share sexual images against their will, and four million children had sexual images of themselves shared without their consent.
UNICEF said the issue is compounded by the fact that children often don’t recognise abuse or know who to report it to, and fear repercussions if they do. Formal systems can feel distant, complex or intimidating, the report noted.
“The report reveals a painful reality. More than 20 million children across the countries studied were subjected to unwanted explicit sexual content or exploitation online, often in the digital spaces where they learn, play, and connect with friends,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “These experiences cause profound emotional and mental distress. Many children suffer in silence, unsure where to turn for help. We cannot look away.”
Information for the report was based on nationally representative survey data collected between 2020 and 2025 from approximately 21,000 internet-using children from the following countries:
Abuse often begins in public spaces, such as in schools or local neighbourhoods, before moving to digital spaces which can further facilitate harm.
Social media and messaging platforms enable different stages of abuse, “including initial contact, relationship-building, sexual solicitation, image-sharing, coercion, blackmail and the continued circulation of sexual content”, the report said.
Sometimes abuse takes place solely online.
According to the report’s findings, more than 60 percent of cases occurred on social media platforms, with the majority on Facebook (50 percent), WhatsApp (29 percent), Instagram (24 percent), SnapChat (13 percent) and TikTok (12 percent).
Most children do not seek help if they are being abused. Less than one percent of cases are reported to the police, a social worker or a helpline, while more than four in 10 cases not being disclosed to anyone at all.
“Children are not failing to report; they have correctly worked out that there is nowhere to report to,” Nighat Dad, executive director of the Pakistan-based Digital Rights Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
Dad, whose NGO works to provide safe online spaces in Pakistan, noted that incidents repeatedly occur online because of a “design problem – the message request, the move to a private chat, the reshare, the ability to return after being blocked”.
Many children minimise their experiences or do not recognise when they’ve been abused, she said.
Even when children do speak out, to a close friend, sibling, or parent, doing so may not necessarily stop the abuse or bring perpetrators to account.
UNICEF emphasised that its research interviews were the first time many of the children it interviewed had spoken to someone about the abuse they were subjected to.
Dad also cautioned that Pakistan, for example, is a “low-disclosure country” where notions of family “honour” and other cultural barriers prevent children from disclosing the harm they’ve experienced.
“A girl who speaks risks her phone, her schooling and sometimes her safety, and a boy is expected to cope in silence,” Dad said.
Perpetrators often play on gender norms when exploiting children. Stigma and blame are used against girls to keep them silent, while boys are expected to cope alone, or threatened by perpetrators.
“Peer cultures and harmful norms around gender or masculinity can further normalise behaviours that cause significant harm, making abuse harder to recognise and address,” UNICEF noted.
The repercussions are severe, UNICEF said: Children exposed to technology-facilitated sexual abuse and exploitation are four times more likely to have suicidal thoughts and to self-harm, along with higher levels of anxiety.
In Mexico or North Macedonia, for example, the risk of suicidal thoughts or behaviours was more than eight times higher among children who experienced abuse, while in Pakistan the risk of self-harm was more than seven times higher than average, the report found.
Abuse extends well beyond the digital sphere, seeping into children’s everyday lives, schooling and relationships.
UNICEF said the onus to protect children online must be placed on governments and technology companies, which must change how online spaces are designed and regulated.
It also highlighted that while children often take steps to protect each other, societies, schools and families must work to shift the burden of protection away from children.
Citing Meta’s recent settlement, Dad acknowledged that design changes, such as better age verification and parental controls, can and should happen.
“For years those of us working outside the US were told these defaults would break the product. Meta has now shown the product can change.”
A spokesperson for Meta told Al Jazeera, “This report is based on surveys from as far back as 2020, before we introduced the protections UNICEF recommends, like automatically defaulting teens into private accounts and preventing adults from messaging teens they’re not connected to.
“While the report doesn’t provide any specific evidence of abuse, we’ll continue to fight child exploitation aggressively across our apps and support law enforcement in prosecuting the criminals behind it.”
The spokesperson also pointed out that Meta-owned WhatsApp is a private messaging service rather than a social media platform. “We don’t have algorithms that make a piece of content more or less likely to be viewed, and you need someone’s phone number or exact username to connect with them for the first time.”
Snapchat and TikTok have not responded to requests for comment for Al Jazeera.
Israeli forces have fired tear gas into a mosque in the occupied West Bank, leaving worshippers inside struggling to breathe, hours after settlers tried to set fire to a second mosque in the territory.
The Palestinian Ministry of Religious Affairs condemned the continued pogroms on Tuesday, calling them a flagrant violation of the sanctity of places of worship.
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Footage, verified by Al Jazeera, showed worshippers at the mosque in Madama, near Nablus, coughing in the aftermath of the tear gas attack.
One elderly man was seen bent over as another tried to help him.
The ministry said Israeli forces “fired tear gas canisters” into the mosque as people gathered for their evening prayers. The attack “resulted in several elderly worshippers suffering from suffocation and caused widespread disruption to the congregation”, it added.
The attack in Madama came hours after Israeli settlers tried to set fire to another mosque in the nearby town of Bazariya.
Photos and videos from Nur al-Din Zanki Mosque showed blackened burn marks around a window of a room and Hebrew phrases sprayed on the exterior walls.
Majed Nasr, who lives near the mosque, said the attack took place early on Tuesday morning. “There was a small explosion that caused a fire inside the mosque building,” he told the AFP news agency. “We managed to contain the blaze before things could get worse and reach the main upper part of the building.”
The Religious Affairs Ministry condemned the “criminal attack” and said some 13 mosques have been “violated” by the Israeli military or settlers since the start of 2026.
Local sources told the Anadolu agency that the racist slogans sprayed at the site included threats against Palestinians and a message to the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, saying: “Huckabee, greetings from the terrorists.”
Last month, Huckabee had described Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the town of Qusra and other areas of the occupied West Bank as “terrorists”.
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement following the Madama attack, warning of “the dangers of the continued and escalating religious war” waged by Israeli forces and settlers against religious sites in the occupied West Bank, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.
The “systematic attacks … crossed all red lines and risked triggering a religious conflict with serious consequences for the region and the world”, it said.
Settlers also burned vehicles in the town of Beta, south of Nablus, and set fire to a Palestinian vehicle in Nahalin, west of Bethlehem, on Tuesday, according to media reports and footage posted online.
The attacks come amid a sharp increase in pogroms by Israeli forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank.
The United Nations said in August that at least 76 Palestinians have been killed in the territory this year and that some 3,800 people have been displaced by settler violence, as well as demolitions and evictions.
It also said settler violence had reached “unprecedented levels,” with more than 1,430 attacks resulting in casualties or property damage documented this year.
Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces arrested at least 14 Palestinians, including five in Rummanah, one at the Anab checkpoint, one in Tammun, three in Hebron, two in Bethlehem and two in Nablus.
Israeli forces also uprooted olive trees near Jenin, demolished greenhouses and issued a demolition notice for a home in the town of Idhna.
Truth commission to be established after two expert reports failed to agree whether scheme constituted genocide.
Published On 28 Aug 202628 Aug 2026
Greenland is establishing a truth and reconciliation commission surrounding a decades-long forced contraceptive scheme against Indigenous girls and women, after two expert reports failed to agree whether it constituted genocide.
From the 1960s to the 1990s, at least 4,000 Greenlandic Inuits – including girls as young as 12 – received intrauterine devices (IUDs) or contraceptive injections, often without their consent or knowledge, a joint Danish-Greenlandic inquiry found last year.
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That inquiry found the practice was intended to reduce birth rates and family sizes, which Danish authorities at the time viewed as a way to improve living standards and social and health conditions in Greenland, an Arctic island and semi-sovereign territory of Denmark, with a population of 57,000.
Greenland’s government tasked a four-member commission in 2024 with investigating the campaign, which led some victims to suffer serious infections, scarring of the fallopian tubes or removal of the uterus. Some were later unable to have children.
But the experts could not reach a unanimous conclusion, Greenland’s Justice Minister Marianne Paviasen told reporters on Friday, with one report stating there was no genocide and the other saying the extent of the violations could not be established.
“We cannot say, on behalf of the government, whether there was genocide. This is something we can continue to debate,” Paviasen said.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said the reconciliation commission would “not be about assigning blame, but about uncovering the truth with a view to genuine reconciliation”.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Copenhagen would “handle the political process together with the government of Greenland”.
The Greenlandic Siumut Party, however, urged the genocide question to be settled by “a competent and independent international court”.
“Today we could have been far more Greenlanders,” the party added.
Victims have questioned why no Greenlandic Inuit were appointed as experts while recounting painful histories dug up by the panel.
“For me, this is not just about history or politics. It’s my body, my life, and my right to self-determination,” Henriette Berthelsen told the AFP news agency.
“And once again, I see that it is others who will investigate and define what was done to me and to other Inuit women,” she added.
Inger Platou, 70, told Reuters she had woken up from what she had been told was a minor operation only to discover an IUD had been inserted without her consent.
“It turns out we were treated like animals,” she said. “Without consent, they just wanted to stop women from giving birth or having children. It was a very inhumane act.”
Complications from the coil left her unable to become pregnant, she said.
Denmark apologised for the scheme last year, with Frederiksen describing “systematic discrimination” against Greenlanders.
On Thursday, the Danish parliament agreed that women affected by the forced contraception campaign can claim compensation of up to 300,000 Danish crowns ($46,758) each.
WASHINGTON — Thousands of protesters are rallying Friday on the National Mall in support of voting rights and racial justice ahead of the midterm elections, following a wave of changes to voting laws and redistricting that civil rights groups have condemned as detrimental to Black Americans.
The 2026 “Defend the Vote” March on Washington, organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, echoes the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march. The event follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark April decision in Louisiana v. Callais that reinterpreted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing Southern states to redraw their congressional maps in a way that erodes equal representation in Black communities.
“We’ve been doing these marches for years, but this is probably the most important because this is the first year we are marching that the voting rights bill has been nullified by the Supreme Court,” Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“Marches are designed to grab attention and then go into the trenches and organize around that,” he said.
The march opened with prayer and statements from Interfaith Alliance representatives. They spoke on diversity, equity and inclusion practices, voting rights and systemic racism.
“Creator of all, let us draw on each other, with love and mercy, and hold each other up as we march, wipe each other’s tears, heal each other’s wounds,” Ambereen Kahn, an Interfaith Alliance representative, said. “Most compassionate, protect our leaders who guide, instill in their hearts the values of our shared humanity.”
This year’s march, which Sharpton’s group is co-hosting with King’s Drum Major Institute, a progressive think tank and community action group, features dozens of speakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
Sharpton said thousands of civil rights activists from across the southeastern U.S. were traveling to the capital by bus for the rally.
On Thursday, Courtney Pope, 48, was marching across the King Bridge to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. But on Friday, she and other members of the National Handmaid Army were at the Washington march with plans to travel to New York and New Jersey over the next few days.
For Pope, the rally is about finding community alongside promoting voting rights.
“I know that we’ll only be successful if we band together despite our differences,” Pope said.
Friday’s event harkens back to King Jr.’s historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, when more than 200,000 people gathered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. That march, an inflection point in the Civil Rights Movement, came at a fraught moment for the country, when economic headwinds, civil unrest, political division and the Vietnam War bitterly divided Americans.
Sharpton said the Trump administration’s immigration policy for Haitians and white South Africans, as well as cuts to social programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s health subsidies, are unifying policies for this year’s ideologically diverse march attendees. But the redistricting efforts by Republican-led states set to reduce the number of Black lawmakers in Congress loom large over Friday’s march.
“This march is about people who refuse to be counted out. When the courts and the legislature broke apart District 6, they did not just redraw lines,” Rep. Cleo Fields, D-La., said in a texted statement. “They told hundreds of thousands of Black families from Baton Rouge up through the Delta that their voice could be taken away at any moment.”
Fields was the central character in the Supreme Court decision that hollowed out the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The court ruled that his district, created just one term ago to permit a second majority-Black district in a state where Blacks make up 33% of the population, was unconstitutional because it relied too heavily on race.
The court has held that maps can be redrawn for partisan reasons.
Louisiana’s legislature rushed to redraw the district after the high court’s decision, reshaping Fields’ district to cluster it around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana.
Fields has opted not to seek reelection to Congress and instead is pursuing a seat in the state Senate.
“The people taking part in this historic march are answering back, and history will remember that they did,” Fields said.
Rep. Shomari Figures, an Alabama Democrat whose majority-Black district was targeted by the state’s Republican-led redistricting effort, said the original voting rights fight required local movements, national figures, lots of coordination and strategy. He sees this year’s march as a continuation of that legacy.
“My district includes Montgomery, which was the birthplace of it all. It started with a bus boycott in 1955 and that, ultimately, morphed into a broader struggle for civil rights and led to a more broad Civil Rights Movement,” Figures told the AP.
“It led to a Civil Rights Act, led to the Fair Housing Act, led obviously to the Voting Rights Act, and the voting rights movement,” Figures added.
Ahead of Friday, organizations participating in the march, including the NAACP, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Black Voters Matter, filed new claims in federal court in their existing lawsuit against President Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting. The Supreme Court cleared a path Monday for possible implementation of the order, though it remains unclear how much can be put in place before the midterms.
“We will not stand idly by while the voices of the people are silenced,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Thursday. “We must protect every eligible citizen’s right to cast their ballot.”
Brown and Junkroski write for the Associated Press. AP writers Gary Fields in Washington and Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Ala., contributed to this report.
Court order rules that Pentagon acted illegally, punishing AI company for criticism of government.
Published On 28 Aug 202628 Aug 2026
A United States judge has blocked the Pentagon’s blacklisting of technology company Anthropic.
In a 59-page written order issued on Thursday night, District Judge Rita Lin ruled that the Department of Defense had acted illegally when it designated the company a supply chain risk to national security.
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The decision marks the latest turn in the Claude maker’s high-stakes fight with the US military over artificial intelligence safety on the battlefield. The government is expected to fight the ruling.
The judge’s order rebuked the Pentagon, saying it had targeted and punished Anthropic for the company’s public criticism of the Defense Department’s stance on AI deployment on the battlefield.
“The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics,” Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote.
Anthropic’s lawsuit in a California federal court alleges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated the company a national security supply-chain risk.
Hegseth’s move, which blocked Anthropic from military contracts, followed the company’s refusal to allow the military to use its Claude AI models for US surveillance or autonomous weapons.
Anthropic argues that AI models are not reliable enough for autonomous weapons and opposes domestic surveillance. The Pentagon maintains that private companies should not constrain military action.
Executives have said the ban could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business.
During a hearing on July 30, Lin described the government’s position as “really troubling” and “at odds … with the First Amendment”, adding that the record had “gotten worse for the government” over time.
In the same hearing, Department of Justice lawyers argued that the nature of AI models is “so staggeringly enormous and opaque” that the Pentagon cannot evaluate them like physical hardware.
Anthropic welcomed the ruling, stating it remained “focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology”.
The designation was the first time a US company has been publicly labelled a supply-chain risk under an obscure procurement statute aimed at protecting military systems from foreign sabotage.
In its lawsuit, Anthropic alleged the government violated its constitutional rights to free speech and due process by retaliating against its views on AI safety without allowing it to dispute the claim.
The lawsuit called the decision unlawful, unsupported by facts, and inconsistent with the military’s past praise of Claude.
There was no immediate comment from the Pentagon on the ruling.
Just after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, ending the nationwide right to legal abortion, Olivia Rodrigo walked onstage at the Glastonbury festival in the United Kingdom, sad and furious but also galvanized. “I’m heartbroken over what happened in America yesterday,” Rodrigo said onstage then. “I’m devastated and terrified that so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this.”
Four years later, Rodrigo has a new festival of her own this weekend, Daisy Chain Fields in Irvine’s Great Park, that’s entirely in service to those causes of women’s rights and reproductive autonomy.
“I remember being at Glastonbury that day with the most exciting opportunity to perform on that stage, but at the same time, being shaken to my core knowing that women’s rights were being stripped away,” Rodrigo told the Times via e-mail just before the festival. “I want people to walk away from here feeling hopeful and feeling like they can effect change. That was the entire thesis of this festival. I do think we can. We’ve seen it happen before, and we’re seeing some change now.”
Daisy Chain Fields is an ambitious escalation of Rodrigo’s activism in this sphere, which has paralleled her chart-topping success after debuting as a teenager with her LP “Sour” in 2021. The festival — with similarly-aligned acts including Chappell Roan, Doechii, Bikini Kill, Katseye and others — will be a globally-prominent cultural event, underlining the urgency for reproductive and women’s rights work amid the current right-wing backlash. It raises funds to benefit 10 like-minded advocacy groups, and intertwines her music career and women’s rights advocacy in ways few pop artists at her scale are attempting.
“We are ecstatic to have Olivia supporting our work, not only financially, but using her voice and reach to shine a light on these urgent issues,” said Nancy Northup, president and chief executive of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which challenged abortion bans in 11 states, and filed the first lawsuit on behalf of women denied abortions in 50 years. “Women are continuing to suffer under these bans, and that won’t stop until abortion is federally protected once again. Her support will help us continue filing lawsuits and advocating for laws that expand reproductive rights, both in the U.S. and globally.”
Olivia Rodrigo performs during the opening night of her Guts tour at Acrisure Arena on Feb. 23, 2024, in Palm Desert, Calif.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Rodrigo’s public work in activism began in earnest on the tour for “Guts” in February 2024. That tour coincided with the launch of Rodrigo’s Fund 4 Good, a nonprofit (under the fiscal sponsorship of the 501(c)(3) group Entertainment Industry Foundation) that steered $2.5 million in profits and donations from that tour to a range of global groups working in women’s rights, health and reproductive care. These included Jhpiego — a Johns Hopkins-affiliated global women’s health NGO — along with Women’s Shelters Canada, Women Against Violence Europe, and the Korea Foundation for Women.
“She did something. She could have played it safe, but she acknowledged that she has the power to make stuff happen, and she’s going to use it for good,” said Kathleen Hanna, founder of the legendarily activist punk group Bikini Kill, who will play Daisy Chain Fields on Saturday. While Hanna recalled feeling initially skeptical about the all-women Lilith Fair in the ’90s, she respects how Rodrigo learned about that fest’s communal, radical goals from a recent documentary, and sought to update it for her fans’ generation.
“What’s awesome about that is that it’s not that rare” for artists to be outspoken on these issues now, Hanna said. “Look at Megan Thee Stallion, Hayley Williams — all I see is women who are like ‘This is bull—.’ In a fascist era, we need to be meeting each other and opening friendship circles instead of isolating ourselves.”
Rodrigo’s advocacy hasn’t always gone smoothly. While on tour for “Guts” in 2024, Rodrigo brought abortion rights groups under the National Network of Abortion Funds to canvass at shows, and some groups handed out free condoms and emergency contraceptives to fans. Those efforts upset conservatives in states like Missouri, which had enacted a near-total abortion ban, and where state legislators sought to ban the morning-after pill. Fearing political backlash, Rodrigo’s management team at the time reportedly asked the groups to refrain from passing out contraceptives, but still encouraged them to canvass on-site.
“I don’t think demanding that women and girls be safe and have ownership over their own bodies is a radical idea,” Rodrigo said. “I was raised by parents who encouraged that belief in me.”
At Daisy Chain Fields, Rodrigo will likely face little resistance — but the show arrives in an ever more challenging time for women’s health and rights.
The return of President Trump to office has resulted in legislation like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that slashed funding for healthcare; decimated funding for groups like USAID; and saw controversial, conspiracy-pushing figures like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought into government. Crucial issues in women’s health risked being ignored or exacerbated.
“It is a fraught moment” said Angela Aina, co-founder and executive director of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, one of the groups supported by Daisy Chain Fields. Aina said that American Black women die in childbirth at three times the rate for white women, and 87% of these deaths were preventable.
“What matters most to us is that the festival is showing people the organizations that are doing this work and pushing solutions,” Aina added. “Black maternal health has too often been treated as a niche concern, something discussed among public health professionals and then set aside.” But when these topics underpin a massive, sold-out festival of music with an audience of young women, it becomes “part of ordinary civic life,” she said.
These organizations said Rodrigo made a real effort to connect personally with their teams and more closely learn about their issues and strategies. Some, like the National Institute for Reproductive Health and Planned Parenthood, focus on reproductive justice. Baby2Baby supports mothers in poverty while Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health focuses on Native and First Nations community healthcare; FreeFrom responds to the epidemic of gender-based violence, while the National Domestic Workers Alliance advocates for care workers, the vast majority of whom are women.
“It’s really extraordinary,” said National Domestic Workers Alliance President Ai-Jen Poo. “[She’s] making the time to come to meetings and learn about each organization directly from us, offering to think through different ways that she can lift up our work even beyond the festival.”
Part of NDWA’s mission is to change the cultural conversation around domestic labor — “We as a culture often refer to it as ‘help,’ as opposed to the profession that it is for millions of workers,” Poo said — an undertaking Poo said Rodrigo understands well.
“I think that she is a great storyteller herself through her music, and she knows that great storytelling is at the heart of what moves people and what creates change for people,” she said.
Olivia Rodrigo speaks at the beginning of the July 14, 2021, daily briefing at the White House in Washington, where she was filming a video to promote vaccines.
(Susan Walsh / Associated Press)
The National Women’s Law Center works across virtually every issue affecting women and girls in the United States. “One of the things I like to say is that our fingerprints are on the lives of women in this country in ways that they’re probably not even aware of,” said Uma Iyer, NWLC’s chief external affairs officer.
Iyer said that the “constant conversation” between law, policy and culture change is at the heart of the NWLC’s work, and Rodrigo’s advocacy keeps that conversation urgent.
“We’ve seen that in how #MeToo played out. That spawned litigation, but it was also a big global cultural moment,” Iyer said. “You’re talking about it at kitchen tables and movie theaters and on talk shows, and that discourse really matters when you’re trying to effect change.”
Each of the nonprofits will have a physical presence at the festival in Irvine’s Great Park. For their station, Poo said the NDWA will set up a space for visitors to learn about care work and pay tribute to the caregivers in their own lives through artwork, which will all knit together “in a big chain of care” by the festival’s end.
“We’re really excited about all the people who will come to our tent and have a conversation with us and stay involved in our movement long afterwards,” she said. “We feel like Daisy Chain is almost like a catalyst for really growing this movement for care in our country.”
Several organizers said the recognition and opportunities for connection that the festival brings are just as meaningful as whatever financial support it generates.
While the festival’s total donation pool is yet unclear, Rodrigo has said that all artists on the lineup are performing for free, though production and staffing costs for a fest this size will be substantial.
What money the nonprofit groups do receive will go right back into “continuing the work,” Iyer said. “The work of gender justice in whatever form it shows up for any of these 10 organizations is really the work of protecting our democracy.”
Money generated by Daisy Chain Fields will be “flexible dollars,” Iyer explained, usable for anything an organization needs to fill in the gaps. “Those are critical dollars for nonprofits to be able to survive and do the work,” she said. Beyond the impact for populations the organization serves, Iyer said the promise of Daisy Chain Fields has boosted morale among NWLC staff during an extremely difficult time in America.
“When you have this big festival with people you love to hear, who bring you joy and bring you comfort and peace and entertainment and laughs and love, and they’re all banding together because this one incredible person asked them to, because she believes it’s the right thing to do — it makes the work a little less hard.”
The work seems to be catching on. Roan, long outspoken on LGBTQ+ rights issues, will throw the Super Graphic Spectacular concert at the Shrine in Los Angeles on Oct. 21-22, benefiting trans youth through Roan’s Midwest Princess Project. Last year, Doechii told the audience at the GLAAD Media Awards in L.A. that as ”hard-won cultural change and rights for transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community have been threatened,” the superstar rapper was “disgusted” by the revanchism.
“Olivia’s involvement is such a gift, because she is reaching and educating young people who may feel checked out or hopeless on these issues,” Northup said. “Olivia is giving us a chance to meet young people where they’re at, and she’s approaching it with positivity. Her message is not about what we’ve lost, it’s about what we can accomplish if we channel our collective power as women and girls.”
Rodrigo just followed up her acclaimed LP “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love” with a new single, “Serena Joy,” titled after a character in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” who complies with an oppressive theocracy.
“If they do it to them, they’re gonna do it to you,” Rodrigo sang, with a fury that brooks no room for despair.
“There’s a growing sentiment among young people and women that we have to create change, and hopefully people are inspired, whether it’s by engaging with some of our NPO partners or simply finding whatever way feels right to them,” Rodrigo said. “There is no doubt in my mind that protecting women and girls, and ensuring they have ownership over their own bodies, has to be a priority for all of us.”
6381380/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
The owners of the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System aim to renew its federal land authorization more than seven years before it expires, seeking to ensure that the Trump administration will make the determination rather than the president’s successor in the White
The human rights situation in Myanmar has “plummeted to a new low”, the United Nations has said, citing the “ever-worsening brutal abuse” of the Rohingya minority and the devastating impact of illicit economies, including illegal mining for rare earths.
In a new report, published on Tuesday, the UN’s human rights office said the quest for control and legitimacy by Myanmar’s military – which seized power in a coup in 2021 – has only deepened the suffering of civilians in the country.
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The military has deployed tactics such as “airstrikes, arson attacks, displacement and denial of assistance” against civilians as it battles ethnic armed groups and militias for control of the vast resource-rich country, the report said.
An estimated 8,075 civilians, including 1,074 children, have been killed since the coup, with at least 1,241 of them occurring in the past year, it said.
The toll is likely higher, the report cautioned, noting that open sources indicate that as many as 15,731 civilians may have been killed since the coup and 3,102 in the last year.
The violence has also resulted in the number of internally displaced people rising to 3.6 million, it said. Some 12.4 million people were facing acute hunger, while 400,000 young children and mothers were suffering from acute malnutrition.
In western Rakhine State, the military and the Arakan Army – a powerful ethnic armed group they are fighting against – have continued to commit widespread and systematic violations and abuses against the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority, it said.
The continuing violence, which comes nine years after a brutal crackdown that forced some 700,000 Rohingya to flee into Bangladesh, has caused renewed displacement, it said.
The report went on to accuse the Arakan Army of carrying out arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, forced labour and recruitment, and destruction of villages and religious sites.
When Rohingya try to escape forced recruitment, they are detained and “routinely subjected to ill-treatment”, with former detainees describing beatings, the removal of fingernails, and chilli being applied to genitals.
The UN human rights office said the absence of the rule of law in Myanmar has resulted in a booming illicit economy, with illegal rare earth mining in northern Kachin and northeastern Shan state strengthening the expansion of transnational criminal networks.
Satellite imagery confirmed Kachin state as the primary rare-earth mining area, with 302 new sites since 2021 – a 149 percent increase.
Mining runoff, meanwhile, has caused environmental contamination, which, in turn, has affected maternal and reproductive health, it said, citing sharp surges in miscarriages and other pregnancy complications tied to heavy metal and chemical exposure.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk called the findings deeply troubling.
“This report depicts a picture of suffering, misery, and cruelty on multiple levels and across the country that is heartbreaking,” Turk said.
The high commissioner urged states, companies and investors to reconsider their involvement with the state.
“I call on all states, companies and investors to undertake serious soul-searching with respect to their actions – or inaction; to ask: is this fair and just for the people of Myanmar?”
An investigation by Amnesty International says the Indian government used lethal weapons, including pellet-firing shotguns, grenades, batons and electric shock devices against Cockroach Janta Party-led protesters. The Modi government has denied it used excessive force.
Published On 25 Aug 202625 Aug 2026
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The two men, detained in the western city of Herat on August 9, were released on Thursday morning and appear to be in good health, says the UN.
Published On 21 Aug 202621 Aug 2026
Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have released two United Nations staff members who were detained more than a week ago, though the reason for their detention remains unclear, the UN said.
The two men were detained in the western city of Herat on August 9. The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said they were released on Thursday morning and appeared to be in good health.
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“UNAMA has not been formally notified of the reasons for their arrest and detention and continues to follow up with the de facto authorities,” the UN said in a statement, adding it understood that charges against the two had been dropped.
It said the organisation was also following up “to ensure respect for the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, as well as the safety, security and freedom of movement of United Nations and associated personnel throughout the country”.
The arrests were the latest in a series of detentions by Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities. Last week, Human Rights Watch said six staff members of a local organisation working on women’s and children’s rights had been “forcibly disappeared” for more than a month.
“For us, we’re just delighted that [the two staff members] have been released, they’re in good health, and they face apparently no more judicial legal issues,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters at the organisation’s headquarters in New York.
Afghan authorities did not immediately comment on the release.
Multiple UN agencies operate across Afghanistan in a range of areas, including health and humanitarian response. The country has been hit hard by international aid cuts and faces numerous challenges, including the return of millions of its citizens from Iran and Pakistan in recent years.
The UN mission’s mandate from the UN Security Council includes promoting and supporting humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, as well as promoting human rights, equality for women and girls, inclusive governance and economic stability.
The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, as the United States and NATO forces withdrew from the country after two decades of war.
Shortly after, they barred girls from education beyond primary school and banned women from nearly all employment, effectively excluding women and girls from public life. They have also removed minimum-age protections for girls’ marriage and made domestic violence punishable only in cases in which a woman has suffered visible injuries or broken bones.
Authorities were warned about dangers of hitting Mohammad Ghamira, who suffered from the rare medical condition haemophilia.
A Syrian police officer has been arrested and may be criminally prosecuted after an investigation found that he hit a detainee with a medical condition who died shortly after being released from custody.
Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Thursday that Mohammad Ghamira, 29, died after being slapped by police investigator Ahmad Jawad, who has since been detained and referred to the public prosecutor.
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Ghamira, who died on Sunday, suffered from haemophilia, a rare condition that prevents blood from clotting properly, making sufferers bleed more easily and for longer periods.
The father of two was a member of the White Helmets, the civil defence organisation made up of volunteers that operated in rebel-held areas in Syria. They went on search and rescue operations and provided medical care following government attacks.
The investigation found that Ghamira had told internal security personnel about his condition, while his wife twice informed authorities about the potential danger.
Ahmad Latouf, head of the investigation committee and assistant interior minister for police affairs, confirmed that Ghamira died after suffering a brain haemorrhage believed to have been caused by the slap.
Two other police officers are also being investigated but are not currently due to be prosecuted.
Ghamira’s death has provoked widespread anger among Syrians, reminding many of the gross human rights abuses that were systematic under former President Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by rebels in December 2024.
New leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has promised to usher in a new era, prioritising human rights and overseeing an inclusive government. However, human rights organisations have documented widespread abuses by government forces, particularly against minority groups.
Commenting on Ghamira’s death on Thursday, the Interior Ministry accused Jawad of violating ministerial instructions and the code of conduct, which strictly prohibit any form of humiliating or abusive treatment of detainees.
Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab said in a statement that the investigation results showed the ministry’s “commitment to reaching the truth and holding accountable those proven to have overstepped”.
“We rose up against the former tyrant’s regime in rejection of injustice and impunity, and therefore, building a state of law begins with our ability to hold the wrongdoer accountable, to give restitution to the victim, and not to do injustice to anyone who has not been proven responsible” for wrongdoing, he said.
Reporting from Syria’s northwestern port city of Latakia, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett said the Syrian government has vowed to take further action.
“There will be surveillance put into police stations and better training provided to officers but they say all of this will take time,” Pett said.
“Part of the reason it has resonated so widely is because of who Mohammad was. He was a young man, 29 years old, and he had two children and was a volunteer with the White Helmets. They were basically seen as heroes. His father joined the revolution and so he’s a figure who many people here in his community and nationally respected,” she added.
“That’s part of why there’s been so much sadness and anger and it’s also [because of] the fact that Mohammad is not the first to be mistreated in detention by the new authorities. Syrian rights organisations have documented other cases of deaths in detention.”
Ghamira was arrested last week accused of theft. He was later released and died at a hospital in Latakia on Sunday.
During a forensic examination, medical experts found no visible signs of violence or severe force, as well as no skull fractures or traumatic wounds.
New Delhi, India – In a crowded ward of New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India’s premier public hospital, a mother sits quietly beside her 29-year-old son, Piyush Singh*.
Diagnosed with stomach cancer a year ago, Singh has already undergone five rounds of chemotherapy. He now lies in the hospital’s palliative care unit, where the goal is no longer to cure the disease but to relieve pain and preserve his dignity.
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“The world comes to AIIMS when they are not well. But where shall we go?” asks his mother. “My son has already received five doses of chemotherapy, but his condition has not improved. The doctors are not telling us anything. I don’t know what to do next.”
Piyush’s family is not asking for his life to end. They simply don’t know what comes when treatment fails.
A few floors away, Aryan* has come to AIIMS from Auraiya, a small town in Uttar Pradesh state, to accompany his 40-year-old brother Amit (name changed), who has been battling mouth cancer for four years. Two surgeries, radiation and two rounds of chemotherapy later, doctors say there is little hope of him surviving. The final checkup has been done. There is nothing more left to try.
“There is no duvidha [dilemma in Hindi],” says Aryan. “The doctors have said no. So it is clear now.”
He plans to take Amit to his rented flat in Gurgaon and give him whatever painkillers he has been prescribed. Beyond that, he has no plan, because no one has given him one.
“I don’t know about palliative care. I don’t know how to ease his pain. I have nothing apart from the medicines I got today,” he said.
Piyush and Amit are no exceptions. They represent a reality that many Indians are coming to terms with – with little institutional help.
India recorded an estimated 1.56 million new cancer cases in 2024, according to an Indian Council of Medical Research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But cancer patients are not alone. Families of patients with traumatic brain injuries and degenerative neurological conditions also hit the same wall.
According to a 2025 analysis by ecancermedicalscience, an open-access medical journal, an estimated seven to 10 million people require palliative care in India, but only about 4 percent receive it.
Such families find themselves with little or no awareness or preparedness for what comes next. Many have never heard of palliative care, or that the law gives them the right to document their treatment preferences before a crisis arrives.
The problem is also rooted in how many Indians confront death – a phenomenon that is one of the least-discussed subjects within families or societies. In many households, conversations about dying are considered inauspicious.
In such a worldview, to think of interventions in how or when someone dies carries a moral weight that goes beyond medicine or law. Families often avoid discussing medical wishes until a loved one is critically ill, leaving relatives to make deeply personal decisions during moments of grief and uncertainty.
The answers are increasingly being shaped not just by medicine, but also by the law.
In 2018, India’s Supreme Court recognised that the “right to die with dignity” was part of the fundamental right to life, enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
The court also allowed such patients to record their wishes about life-sustaining treatment if they lose the capacity to decide in an advanced stage of their ailment.
The top court’s ruling was in response to a petition filed by Common Cause, an NGO, which called for legal procedures allowing terminally ill individuals to execute Advance Medical Directives, commonly known as “living wills”, to refuse life-prolonging medical treatment.
A living will is a legal document that highlights an individual’s preferences for medical treatment when they cannot voice their choices. The provision allows them to nominate a loved one to decide for them.
“It [judgement] broadens the scope of Article 21. It now affirms, kind of completely, that the right to life includes the right to die with dignity. That is the bottom line for us,” Vipul Mudgal, director of Common Cause, the organisation behind the 2005 petition, told Al Jazeera.
Yet, for most Indians, that right largely existed on paper – until six years later.
In 2024, a family in Ghaziabad, an industrial district on the outskirts of New Delhi, filed a petition in the Delhi High Court and later in the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the fate of a 32-year-old patient who was in a vegetative state for nearly 13 years.
Harish Rana’s case was a first in India where passive euthanasia, or withdrawal of life support, was permitted by the top court. On March 11, the Supreme Court directed the withdrawal of his life support at AIIMS, New Delhi. He passed away two weeks later.
But the journey from caregiving to courtroom was not easy.
Rana’s family managed his feeding tube, tracheostomy and urine bag every day for 13 years, and it had drained them.
“A family reaches such a decision when it sees no scope for improvement. Harish Rana could not speak, we were his voice,” Rana’s father Ashok told Al Jazeera. “He was not in that state for 13 days or 13 months, but for 13 years.”
All those years, said Ashok, he watched his son breathe but not recover, with only one question on his mind: “I am around 63 years old, and my wife is 58 years old. If something happens to either of us, who would take care of him?”
That is when they decided to approach the court.
While the Rana case is a landmark, experts say it is unlikely to set an immediate precedent in a country where death is an uncomfortable topic. That is why, despite being legalised in 2018, living wills remain uncommon and largely unheard of.
As a result, terminally ill patients do not discuss their wishes while they still can, and families end up making decisions for them without preparation or guidance.
A 2019 survey across seven cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, by Healthcare at Home (HCAH), a health advocacy group, found that 73 percent of urban Indians were unaware of their right to a living will. Even among people aware of their right, only 6 percent had actually drafted such a will.
“The Harish Rana case was made more complex because there was no living will,” said Manish Jain, the lawyer who represented the family in court. “Living will clinics are absent across India.”
There are only two such clinics in India. The first opened in Mumbai last year, followed by one in New Delhi – both operated by private hospitals, which are beyond the reach of most Indians.
Concerned over a likely misuse of living wills, the Supreme Court made its guidelines complex. However, in the process, the court ended up making it difficult to navigate for most people.
To make a living will legally valid, an individual would sign it before two witnesses and get it countersigned by a magistrate. If the patient later became terminally ill, the treating doctor would be required to form a board of specialists with at least 20 years of experience each, whose findings then had to go to a district magistrate, who would form a second medical board. Only after both boards agreed could the process move forward, and any disagreement meant the matter went to the regional High Court.
In 2019, the Indian Society for Critical Care Medicine, a nonprofit group of physicians, approached the Supreme Court, arguing its guidelines were unworkable. In 2023, a five-judge top court bench simplified the process, removing the requirement of a magistrate’s countersignature, reducing the minimum medical experience requirement for review boards from 20 years to five, and allowing multiple nominees instead of one.
“Decisions are being made every day, sometimes by the family members, sometimes by the doctors, sometimes because of paucity of money,” said Mudgal.
He said if the families, doctors and courts can make end-of-life decisions for an individual, why cannot the individuals make those decisions for themselves? This recognition, while respecting individual autonomy, also relieves family members from the guilt of deciding for their loved one, he added.
“If there is no meaning left in life, somebody is kept alive artificially, just beating the heart with some mechanical device, that life has no meaning,” he said.
Yet, such questions remain unanswered by law. Living wills and the right to die exist entirely through judicial interpretation. There is no parliamentary law governing the same.
“There is no framework [of parliamentary law] passed by the parliament,” Jain said. “The Supreme Court of India itself requested the government to pass legislation regarding this issue,” he added, first in 2018 and again in 2023.
But lack of a law is only one part of the challenge.
For families, the absence of palliative care means little or no guidance on what comes after treatment options run out. Even families like Piyush’s, who have access to palliative care, don’t know what comes next.
“There are many patients like this who don’t have legal awareness of passive euthanasia. Not only patients, but their doctors also do not have full awareness about palliative care,” Dr Saipriya Tewari, principal consultant and unit head of pain management and palliative care at Max Super Speciality Hospital in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera.
She said families often look confused when told there is no treatment left, and that they should take the patient home.
“What will they do after taking the patient home? Nobody tells them. It is only discussed if the palliative care doctor is involved in the treatment,” Tewari said. “And even if the end is coming, then how do we maintain dignity in time? That is the question.”
Piyush’s mother has a different question.
“If he is sick, then we have to get treatment. We have to do something to keep him alive. What should we do? We are not able to think of a way out of this. Nobody is giving us any suggestions about where to go.”
*Names changed to protect the identity of the patients and their families.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department finalized a rule Monday that will pave the way for people who have been barred from owning firearms because of criminal convictions to apply to have their gun rights reinstated.
The process launched by newly confirmed Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche is a victory for 2nd Amendment advocates who have long pushed for nonviolent people with felony convictions to be given a pathway to regain their legal right to own firearms.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” Blanche said in a statement. The attorney general said the new process will protect “public safety while giving deserving Americans a real path to restoration.”
It’s the latest move by President Trump’s administration to ease firearms restrictions. The Justice Department moved earlier this year to roll back and modify a slate of gun regulations. Separately, the department recently decided against challenging a court ruling that struck down regulations on firearm suppressors and certain guns.
Federal law has long allowed people who have had their gun rights stripped because of felony convictions to petition the government for the ability to own firearms again, but Congress since 1992 has effectively barred the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from processing applications.
The Trump administration’s rule aims to circumvent that by establishing a new application system using an online portal.
The Justice Department says restoration will be granted on a case-by-case basis, weighing a person’s record and reputation to determine whether they pose a likely threat to public safety. Officials say people who have been convicted of violent crimes, registered sex offenders, people living in the country illegally and others whom officials believe pose a danger to society will be denied “absent extraordinary circumstances.”
Richer writes for the Associated Press.
FairSquare says the FIFA president should not be able to run again under the world football organisation’s statutes.
Published On 17 Aug 202617 Aug 2026
Human rights organisation FairSquare has urged FIFA to rule that Gianni Infantino is ineligible to seek another term as the football governing body’s president, arguing he has already served the maximum three terms permitted under the body’s statutes.
FIFA presidents are limited to three terms in office. However, in 2022, Infantino successfully argued that his first spell in charge, which began when he was elected at an Extraordinary FIFA Congress in 2016 following Sepp Blatter’s resignation, should not count towards that limit because it completed an interrupted mandate.
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In a letter sent to FIFA’s Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee (GACC) as reported by The Athletic, FairSquare said that interpretation was inconsistent with FIFA statutes.
“The complaint we have filed provides clear evidence that this is a clear breach of the rules and one that sets a very dangerous precedent,” FairSquare’s Director Nicholas McGeehan told the Reuters news agency.
“The rules state clearly that three presidential terms is the maximum allowed; FIFA can’t simply circumvent this rule – which serves as a check on presidential power – by saying that his first term doesn’t count.”
Infantino is facing mounting scrutiny ahead of next year’s FIFA Congress, where he is expected to seek re-election for the 2027-31 cycle. The vote is scheduled to take place in Morocco on March 18.
Last week, UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF called for a review of Infantino’s conduct after FIFA proposed creating a $20bn subsidiary linked to its competitions, including the World Cup, to attract private investment. Sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters that the three confederations viewed the letter as an opportunity for Infantino to quit with his dignity intact.
Several national associations have also voiced concerns. Scottish Football Association chief executive Ian Maxwell told the BBC on Monday that his federation would not support Infantino’s re-election.
Infantino, however, retains the backing of the African and South American confederations.
FairSquare also questioned the transparency of the 2022 ruling, saying the committee’s reasoning had never been made public.
“The fact they didn’t provide any reasoning to support this claim, and that they announced the apparent decision two days before the final of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, suggests that they knew full well that there was no basis to discount Infantino’s first term,” McGeehan said.
The letter to the GACC was drafted with assistance from Miguel Maduro, the former head of FIFA’s independent Governance and Review Committee, who said the governing body could not disregard its own rules.
“The principle of term limits was a fundamental aspect of the 2016 reform aimed at limiting power and the rule introduced is clear: no FIFA president can serve more than three terms of office,” Maduro said in a statement.
“Trying to carve out an exception to such a rule for Mr Infantino reveals both a resistance to the principle of term limits and how some at FIFA conceive of rules not as rules but as obstacles to be circumvented.”
Palestinian politicians and analysts have warned against what they describe as an Israeli plan to illegally annex the occupied West Bank by implementing a series of decisions and actions under different pretexts.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz, on Friday, ordered the military to prepare a plan for transferring civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the decision follows criticism over the army’s handling of Israeli settlers who besieged a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra.
Katz justified the shift, saying, “The army’s role is to combat Palestinian terrorism … and not chase hilltop youth.”
The Defence Ministry indicated the police would establish a dedicated force to handle these civilian matters.
However, Palestinian officials and a wide array of political experts warn this structural shift represents a dangerous acceleration of illegal annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera that the settlers are the “spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaisation”.
He drew direct historical parallels to the mass displacement of Palestinians, stating, “They repeat what the Zionist terror gangs did in 1948, like the Haganah and the Stern Gang.”
Barghouti warned that placing security in the hands of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and illegal Israeli settlements under Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich amounts to “handing over the West Bank to the settlers”.
He stressed that this is an open war on the population, adding, “The actual ruler in the West Bank is the known fascist terrorist Smotrich.”
Analysts argue that replacing military occupation law with domestic civilian law fundamentally alters the legal reality of the territory. Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the decision legally erases the borders.
“The government is dealing with the West Bank not as an occupied territory,” Mustafa said. He explained that by transferring power to a civilian police force, “this means that the government has annexed the West Bank”.
He noted this move absolves the military of its obligations under international law, placing enforcement under Ben-Gvir.
Mustafa warned that Ben-Gvir, who previously oversaw the demolition of thousands of Arab homes in Israel, will now command the police to “support the settlers more and more and push them more and more towards deepening their repression and terrorism against the Palestinians”.
Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the mandate. Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, described the move as a blatant violation of international agreements and an attempt to “impose Israeli law and sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to entrench the illegal annexation of Palestinian land”.
The Palestinian group Hamas echoed this sentiment, releasing a statement calling the order a “dangerous step on the path to imposing de facto annexation” that provides “cover and more protection for the escalating attacks and crimes of the settlers”.
The Palestinian Authority has accused the Israeli government and its military of sponsoring settlers’ violence. Even Israeli members of parliament have accused the army of being complicit.
Analysts stress that relieving the military of its duties essentially deputises settler violence, turning them into an armed extension of the state.
Nihad Abu Ghosh, an expert in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that there is no contradiction between the army and the settlers. He noted that the settlers have evolved into “fascist militia formations” that perform the state’s dirty work.
“These are fascist militia formations, and there are similar precedents in many countries that were ruled by fascism, whether in Spain, Italy, Germany, or even Chile,” Abu Ghosh said.
He added that these militias carry out roles that “require evading any discipline, rules, or laws” to achieve a “creeping, gradual annexation to make it a reality”.
The dual legal framework resulting from this shift has drawn sharp international and local criticism. Shadi al-Shurafa, a researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the situation is a textbook definition of segregation.
“We are facing an application of an overt racist apartheid system in the West Bank,” al-Shurafa said, noting it involves one regime operating with two entirely different laws based on ethnicity.
He added that the ultimate goal of the current government is carrying out complete ethnic cleansing and trapping Palestinians in “isolated cantons and isolated Bantustans”.
Other experts argue that the move completely alters the international legal status of the territory, pushing the crisis into a new, more dangerous phase.
“The subject has bypassed the issue of annexation to a post-annexation phase and creating a reality where the Palestinian finds himself forced to think about migration,” said Adel Shadid, expert in Israeli affairs.
Analysts also pointed to the role of the international community, particularly the United States, in enabling this systemic shift.
Shadid dismissed recent US condemnations of settler violence as mere theatre to “mislead global public opinion”.
He argued that the underlying project has full US backing, noting that “all that is happening now is an American-Israeli plan and there is harmony between the two right-wing administrations in Washington and here in Israel”.
Andrew Whitley, a former United Nations official and director of the Balfour Project, stressed that the planned transfer is “completely illegal” and urged immediate global intervention.
He told Al Jazeera that the “Palestinian state is disappearing before our eyes”, demanding that the international community move beyond rhetoric.
“We have to do much more than just wring our hands and complain that governments are not doing anything about this,” Whitley said, calling for concrete sanctions to halt the rapid erasure of the Palestinian presence.
According to a new report, the United States federal government has taken a massive step back from its role in protecting civil rights across the country.
On Thursday, the nonprofit Human Rights Watch issued a 112-page analysis of the government’s civil rights activities from January 2025 through the start of 2026, a period that captures the opening months of President Donald Trump’s second term.
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The report concludes that the federal agencies responsible for stopping discrimination have largely been gutted of their staff.
Additionally, top-down directives by Trump have de-emphasised the federal government’s role in protecting civil rights across the country, according to the group.
“While claiming to protect all Americans, the administration is rolling back systems that communities have long turned to for relief,” Trey Walk, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
The report examines four key agencies within the federal government dedicated to civil rights.
They include the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department, the Fair Housing Office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Human Rights Watch spoke with current and former federal workers, lawyers, complainants and community groups who had been involved in cases alleging discrimination.
It also reviewed court filings and federal agency directives that illustrated the pivot in priorities under the second Trump administration.
The federal government’s role in civil rights protections goes back centuries, starting with the US Constitution.
In 1791, Congress ratified an addition to the country’s founding document that established civil protections like the freedom of religion. Those first 10 amendments became known as the Bill of Rights.
Over the decades, more amendments were added, most notably after the US Civil War, to guarantee rights like equal protection under the law.
While the Constitution contains explicit language about religion and race, critics point out that there is no language that confers equal protection based on sex or gender.
The history of the Department of Justice is closely entwined with the need to enforce civil rights law after the Civil War.
Created in 1870, the department addressed several needs, including a push to professionalise and centralise the country’s federal law enforcement. But it also helped prosecute violent white supremacist groups at a time when local authorities, particularly in southern states, sometimes refused to.
The US Civil Rights Movement, starting in the 1950s, also spurred a surge in federal infrastructure. It was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, for instance, that established a dedicated civil rights division within the Justice Department.
Trump’s second term ushered in a backlash towards policies broadly considered to be part of the “diversity, equity and inclusion” movement, or DEI.
That movement gained popularity in the early 2020s, particularly after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, sparked a public reckoning over racial inequality.
Trump, however, has called DEI “racially discriminatory”. During his campaign for a second term, he argued that there was a “definite anti-white feeling in this country”.
Since starting his second term, Trump has sought to undo policies that his administration argues give unfair advantages to demographics like women and minorities.
In addition, federal agencies like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division suspended certain cases they were pursuing, including some involving sexual harassment and transgender rights.
New investigations were opened instead, including against the footwear giant Nike, which was accused this year of discrimination against white employees.
In May 2025, the Department of Justice also announced it would halt investigations and reform agreements involving police departments accused of racial discrimination.
Such measures had been taken in places like Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, after public outcry over the police killings of unarmed Black people, including Floyd.
The report chronicled an overall weakening in the federal bodies designed to protect civil rights.
Job cuts and resignations were part of that trend. The Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, for instance, boasted about 365 lawyers in January 2025, when Trump took office.
By the end of that year, three-quarters of those lawyers had left the agency, an exodus driven by what Human Rights Watch called a “coordinated effort to undermine career staff”.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department told Al Jazeera its Civil Rights Division “remains dedicated to protecting the rights of all Americans”.
The department also said it had added 100 personnel since the 2025 departures.
According to the spokesperson, the Civil Rights Division is currently focused on “protecting religious liberty, Second Amendment rights, and women’s and girls’ spaces, standing against illegal race-based policymaking and DEI, and defending parents’ fundamental right to direct their children’s upbringing and education”.
Other agencies in the Human Rights Watch report likewise saw a decrease in their ranks as well as a reduction in their civil rights work.
The Office of Fair Housing went from 31 staffers to 11 by mid-2025. Some 115 complaints prepared by the office and referred to the Justice Department for possible legal action were quashed, according to the report.
At the Department of Education, the Office for Civil Rights initially had 568 workers across 12 offices when Trump took office in 2025. Within a few months, seven of those offices were shuttered, and half of the civil rights-related workers were gone.
Between May and September 2025, the office dismissed about 90 percent of the nearly 10,000 complaints it received, a higher rate than it would have in the past, the report said.
Human Rights Watch found that many victims and communities grappling with discrimination no longer had the benefit of a federal agency to help them in their cases.
One community housing group told Human Rights Watch that the Department of Housing and Urban Development no longer responds in a timely fashion to reported instances of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
Some federal agencies also appear to have walked away from their role in monitoring discrimination and overseeing reforms around the country, according to the report.
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has a long history of investigating discrimination claims and working with school districts to enact change.
But Human Rights Watch observed that the office has largely stopped dealing with complaints under Trump.
While the Office of Civil Rights required policy changes or monitoring in response to 336 cases in the first half of 2024, only 59 cases received such a remedy over a similar period in 2025.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, for instance, parents complained after white students held a mock “slave auction” on the social media platform Snapchat, where they bid for the sale of their fellow Black students. That case is no longer being pursued by the Office of Civil Rights as of last year.
More than half of women’s organisations still operating in Afghanistan could cease operations within the next year, UN Women warns.
Five years since the Taliban came to power, the United Nations has warned that funding issues mean more than half of women’s organisations still operating in Afghanistan could cease operations within the next year.
Susan Ferguson, UN Women’s special representative in Afghanistan, appealed to donor countries on Friday not to cut funding for women’s programmes, saying to do so would only deepen the suffering of Afghan women.
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More than half of 74 women’s organisations surveyed in April are likely to have to suspend operations or close in the next year due to funding problems, Ferguson said.
The UN’s $1.7bn humanitarian appeal for Afghanistan was only 25 percent funded, and nearly three-quarters of the women’s organisations had experienced funding cuts in 2025, while about two-thirds reported that they had six months or less of operational funding remaining, she added.
The UN’s call comes as the Taliban marks five years since US forces withdrew from the country, effectively handing back power to the group in August 2021, after 20 years of war.
Bright white flags of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have been installed this week across the Afghan capital Kabul, with new murals declaring: “Independence is a sign of dignity, pride and identity”.
The Taliban is also hosting a cricket match as part of the celebrations – but, just like much of public life in Afghanistan, women and girls are barred from attending.
![An Afghan boy buys a Taliban flag from a roadside vendor in Afghanistan's Ghazni province on August 14, 2026 ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Taliban government's return to power. [Mohammad Faisal Naweed/AFP]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/afp_6a7f9d087f1a-1786748168.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
The Taliban has imposed more than 100 decrees restricting women’s rights since returning to power, affecting nearly every aspect of their daily lives, from education and employment to freedom of movement, healthcare and access to justice, Ferguson said.
Despite repeated Taliban promises to find an ideologically compliant way for them to attend school, girls are still banned from secondary schools and women from universities.
More than half of 3,200 women surveyed by UN Women said they now leave their homes only once or twice a month.
Seven in 10 women described their mental health as bad or very bad, Ferguson said.
On Friday, a group of 56 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Lebanon, the United States and the United Arab Emirates, issued a joint statement at the UN renewing calls on the Taliban to reverse restrictions on women and girls, saying its “systematic repression of women and girls has become a defining feature of the current system”.
Five years of Taliban rule have left wider Afghan society facing a slew of other challenges.
More than half of primary school-aged children are out of school, and child malnutrition has reached critical levels in a third of Afghanistan’s provinces, according to the UN World Food Programme.
Infrastructure in the country has been damaged by a series of deadly earthquakes and floods that have also killed thousands.
While deaths from “terrorism” have fallen precipitously since the Taliban took power, according to data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the country has become embroiled in a series of deadly border confrontations with its neighbours in both Iran and Pakistan.
The country also remains relatively diplomatically isolated, with Russia being the only country worldwide to formally recognise Taliban rule.
