Rights

The government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has been accused of human rights abuses against critics.

Nicaragua’s government has stripped masses of lawyers of their licences to practise, in what critics see as yet another attack on the country’s critics.

On Friday, a United Nations expert called the government’s actions a “purge of the legal profession”, aimed at eroding the country’s final shreds of democratic checks and balances.

Nicaragua’s husband-wife co-presidents, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, have led a government that has increasingly carried out an all-out crackdown on dissent.

That effort intensified after mass social protests in 2018 that the government violently repressed.

Since then, the government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and others, forcing thousands to flee the country. It has also stripped hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions.

Since 2018, it has also shut down more than 5,000 nongovernmental organisations, largely religious groups, but also local rotary clubs and scouting organisations.

In recent days, lawyers noticed that their licences to practise law in Nicaragua were removed without explanation from the Supreme Court of Justice’s registry, according to Reed Brody, an American human rights lawyer and member of a UN panel of experts on the Central American country.

Other lawyers also confirmed their certifications were revoked.

There was no official notification by the government, and Nicaragua’s government did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press news agency.

Brody said the full scope of the revocation was not immediately clear, but it “would certainly appear to be at least hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers” who were affected.

“This follows the pattern that we’ve been seeing for years. First, they closed the NGOs, the universities, the independent media. You know, they’ve gone after the churches, and now it seems the legal profession,” Brody said. “Anyone who might stand between the government and citizens.”

Brody said he knew of at least 20 lawyers who had been affected.

Juan Diego Barberena, a lawyer and human rights defender exiled in Costa Rica since 2022, was among those stripped of his official certification and said he knew of at least 25 more colleagues like him.

On Thursday, Barberena tried to access his legal accreditation on the government’s database and said his name and licence number were wiped clean from the system.

“This is a means of exercising totalitarian control over the legal profession,” Barberena said. “This means that the dictatorship can decide who gets to practise and who doesn’t.”

The move echoes other steps the government has taken in recent years.

Many Nicaraguan exiles who were stripped of their citizenship and rendered “stateless” have reported similar stories. They or their family members would search for their birth certificates and other legal documents in official databases, only to be told they do not exist.

But Barberena and Brody said the move this week by authorities went a step further, noting that those erased from the system were not just dissenters. Some were simply Nicaraguans living abroad.

Others practised criminal or family law that didn’t touch on politics, while some were government sympathisers, Barberena said.

Brody framed it as a move to whittle away at any last remaining shred of independence in a judicial system already firmly under control of Ortega and Murillo.

“On one hand, it’s an arbitrary measure to punish political dissent,” Barberena said. “On the other, it’s the dictatorship looking medium-term and wanting to prevent lawyers, experts and academics from participating in the future of the country’s institutions.”

Syria regains voting rights in the OPCW as new leadership makes progress in addressing chemical weapons issues.

The global chemical weapons’ watchdog has announced it has handed voting rights back to Syria because “concrete steps” have been taken to address outstanding issues since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

In a statement published on Thursday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said the decision follows a “significant change” in circumstances since Syria was suspended in 2021. That was due to the former government’s failure to declare the full scope of its chemical weapons programme and the repeated use of poison gas during the civil war.

Since a lightning offensive ousted long-time ruler al-Assad in 2024, “the new Syrian authorities committed to fulfilling Syria’s obligations under the Convention and have since taken concrete steps to cooperate with the Technical Secretariat to achieve this goal”, read the statement.

Actions taken by the new government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa include facilitating verification activities and taking initial steps in destroying identified remnants.

“These decisions reflect the tangible progress achieved through continued cooperation and constructive engagement between the Technical Secretariat and the Syrian Arab Republic, with the support of the wider community of States Parties,” said OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias.

In 2013, Syria joined the OPCW and agreed to the destruction of its weapons to be supervised by the watchdog. Back then, Syria was believed to possess about 1,000 tonnes of toxins and had agreed to destroy them under a joint Russian-US proposal designed to avert a US military strike on its territory.

Syria’s decision followed a global outcry over a suspected chemical attack that same year in Ghouta, an eastern suburb of the capital Damascus.

US intelligence estimated that at least 1,400 people, including 426 children, were killed in that attack which it attributed with “high confidence” to the Syrian government. Al-Assad denied involvement and blamed rebels.

According to OPCW, while Syria submitted an initial declaration of its chemical weapons programme, the former government did not declare all its chemical weapons programme and attempted to mislead inspectors about its overall scope and scale.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — She refused to ban books, many of them about racism and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people. And for that, Suzette Baker was fired as a library director in a rural county in central Texas.

“I’m kind of persona non grata around here,” said Baker, who had headed the Kingsland, Texas, library system until she refused to take down a prominent display of several books people had sought to ban over the years.

Now, Baker is fighting back. She and two other librarians who were similarly fired have filed workplace discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. And as culture war battles to keep certain books from children and teens put public and school libraries increasingly under pressure, their goal is redemption and, where possible, eventual reinstatement.

So far, it’s a wait-and-see whether the claims will succeed — and set new precedent — in the struggle between teachers and librarians around the country who oppose book bans and conservative activists who say some books are inappropriate for young minds.

The fight has involved a record number of book-banning efforts, some libraries cutting ties with the American Library Assn. — which opposes book bans — and even attempts to prosecute librarians for allowing children to access books some consider too graphic.

At least one terminated librarian has gained a measure of success.

Brooky Parks, who was fired for defending programs on anti-racism and LGBTQ+ stories she organized for teens at the Erie Community Library north of Denver, won a $250,000 settlement in September. Reached through the Colorado Civil Rights Division, the settlement requires her former employer to give librarians more say in decisions involving library programs.

Parks’ settlement with the High Plains Library District capped a stressful eight-month period without work, when community donations helped her avoid losing her home. And it will probably resolve Parks’ claim with the EEOC, said attorney Iris Halpern, who represents Parks and the other two librarians.

“I just wasn’t going to back down from it. It was just the right thing to do,” said Parks, now a librarian at the University of Denver.

After her firing in 2022, Baker filed an EEOC claim against her employer, the Llano County Library System in Kingsland. And in September 2023, Terri Lesley filed a claim over her firing last summer as executive director of the Campbell County Public Library System in Gillette, Wyo.

Halpern, with the Denver firm Rathod Mohamedbhai, compared the wrongful-termination claims to civil rights-era legal battles.

“It is honestly sad that we’ve gotten to this point. But history is a constant struggle, and we have to learn from our past,” she said.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act established the EEOC to enforce laws against workplace discrimination. One legal expert thinks the librarians might be able to prevail on the grounds that, under those laws, employees may not be discriminated against for associating with certain classes of people.

“With any case, the devil can be in the details in terms of how the facts come out and what they can present. But these are definitely actionable claims,” said Rutgers University law professor David Lopez, a former EEOC general counsel.

An EEOC investigation can take more than a year. After that, the EEOC may attempt to reach a settlement with the employer out of court, sue on the employee’s behalf or issue a letter saying the employee has grounds to sue on their own.

The librarians haven’t yet received an EEOC response and none is expected before the end of next year.

“I would love to be optimistic,” Baker said. “I know there are a lot of people in this community who are just absolutely behind the library being open and free and equal for all. And there’s a lot of people who aren’t. So it’s a hard, hard situation.”

EEOC spokesperson Victor Chen declined to comment on specific filings, saying, “We can’t even confirm or deny we have these complaints.”

The county attorney offices and other representatives of the government officials who fired Parks, Baker and Lesley did not return phone and email messages seeking comment, or declined to comment.

At her Texas library, Baker displayed several books that have been targeted in recent book bans and a sign that read: “We put the ‘lit’ in literature” — a reference to a Tennessee pastor’s recent burning of books.

Baker was fired after refusing to take down the display and signs — considered the last straw after she resisted book banning in her library.

In March, a federal judge ordered 17 books returned to Kingsland library shelves while a citizen lawsuit against book banning proceeded. The works ranged from children’s books to award-winning nonfiction, including “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health,” by Robie Harris.

“Content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny,” Texas U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in his March 30 ruling. He cited a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that barred communities from banning signs because of what they say.

The Llano County Commissioners Court decided against closing the county’s three libraries in response to the ruling. Closing the libraries would have echoed the history across the U.S. of closing swimming pools rather than desegregating them, Halpern said.

Like Baker, Lesley had trouble finding work after being fired from the library system she directed in Gillette, Wyo. Her dismissal followed two years of turmoil over challenges to the books available and library programs.

Some of the same county officials who opposed a transgender magician’s plans to perform at the library went on to join local residents in seeking to ban books, according to Lesley’s EEOC filing.

Baker and Lesley both were fired after local officials appointed new library board members willing to be more aggressive about pulling books.

“Our county commissioners appointed board members who were sympathetic to the people who wanted to remove the books. And it was a long dance to try to get it there. And in the end they had to fire me, I think, in order to be able to meet their goal,” Lesley said.

The Campbell County Commission skirted a deputy county attorney’s recommendation not to appoint past applicants for the board without reinterviewing them along with new candidates, according to Lesley’s EEOC claim.

“I saw this as a well-executed attack on the library by a group of citizens and elected officials. It was an attack on the LGBTQ+ community as well,” she said. “And it was an attack on the books.”

Elyas Abu Safia says his father can barely breathe or speak after more than 555 days in Israeli prison.

The son of a prominent Palestinian doctor abducted and held by Israel without charge has issued an urgent appeal for his father’s release, warning that his health has sharply deteriorated after more than 555 days in prison, as a rights group warned that his life was in danger.

Elyas Abu Safia, the son of Dr Hussam Abu Safia, said in a video message on Sunday that his father, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, showed signs of severe abuse after Israeli authorities transferred him to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.

“The day before yesterday, the lawyer Nasser Odeh managed to visit my father, where he told us painful details about this visit,” said Elyas, who is also a doctor.

“My father was unable to breathe. My father was unable to speak,” he said, adding: “His face was disfigured from the marks of torture and pain, and the blood he endured inside the prison, especially after the last court session held in Jerusalem.”

Israeli forces arrested Abu Safia at work on December 27, 2024, as they intensified their attacks on northern Gaza’s healthcare system as part of the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza. Two months earlier, an Israeli drone attack killed another of his sons, Ibrahim, at the entrance of the hospital where he worked.

Elyas accused Arab and Muslim leaders of abandoning his father.

“You deprived us even of your voices, your solidarity and your support, which should have been there from the start of the detention,” he said.

“But sadly, your silence is a betrayal and a crime, and complicity in torturing my father and the hostages inside Israeli prisons,” he added.

‘The most shocking testimony’

Physicians for Human Rights Israel warned that Abu Safiya’s life is in immediate danger after his transfer to the Rakefet section of Nitzan prison.

The group said lawyer Nasser Odeh visited Abu Safia on July 2 and documented severe injuries, signs of assault, difficulty breathing and repeated loss of consciousness. It said guards brought him into the visit with his hands and feet bound and surrounded him with masked officers.

Odeh also saw fresh bruises and injuries on Abu Safiya’s head, around his eyes, ears and neck. The wounds were so severe that the lawyer struggled to recognise him, the group said.

“The information we received raises serious and immediate concerns for Abu Safiya’s life. The lawyer’s testimony is among the most shocking we have heard since the beginning of the war: a man detained without charge tells his lawyer that he believes they will kill him, after he arrived for the visit injured, suffering from difficulty breathing, and on the verge of losing consciousness,” Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights, told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Israeli authorities have not filed charges against Abu Safia. They classified him as an “unlawful combatant”, a designation Israel has used to hold Palestinians for prolonged periods without trial.

Physicians for Human Rights has demanded his release, along with other imprisoned Palestinian doctors. In March, United Nations experts also called on Israel to free Abu Safia immediately and ensure he receives medical care.

He is one of 14 Palestinian doctors from Gaza currently held by Israel without charge.

The Potomac isn’t just the name of a river, it’s part of a much older story. Al Jazeera’s Emma Withrow explains, from Alabama to Yosemite, our latest online interactive explores the Native American origins of 50 names across the United States, what they mean, and how they were originally pronounced by Indigenous speakers.

Sudan has been engulfed in a devastating civil war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. The conflict has evolved into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, displacing millions, collapsing healthcare and public services, and triggering repeated warnings of famine and ethnic violence.

The latest concern centres on Al-Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan. The city is strategically important because it links central Sudan with the western Darfur region and serves as a major logistical and commercial hub. Control of Al-Obeid would provide whichever side captures it with a crucial military corridor for moving troops and supplies across Sudan.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, civilians in the city have endured siege-like conditions for around 18 months, with dwindling food, water and medical supplies, while drone strikes and shelling have intensified.

Why it matters

The warning from UN High Commissioner Volker Türk suggests international concern that Al-Obeid could become another major atrocity site similar to previous battles in Darfur.

Several factors make the situation particularly alarming:

• Strategic military battle: Both the SAF and RSF view Al-Obeid as critical to controlling supply routes between central and western Sudan.
• Civilian catastrophe: Thousands of civilians remain trapped as fighting intensifies, with limited humanitarian access and worsening shortages of clean water, food and healthcare.
• Risk of mass atrocities: Britain requested the emergency UN debate amid fears that an RSF offensive could result in large-scale civilian killings similar to previous episodes documented elsewhere in Sudan.
• Humanitarian spillover: Further escalation would increase refugee flows into neighbouring countries already struggling to absorb displaced Sudanese populations.

Key stakeholders

Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)

• Controls parts of central and eastern Sudan.
• Seeks to prevent RSF advances into North Kordofan and maintain control over key transport routes.

Rapid Support Forces (RSF)

• Attempting to expand territorial control after major campaigns elsewhere.
• Surrounding Al-Obeid could strengthen its position in western and central Sudan.

United Nations

• The OHCHR is documenting civilian casualties and warning of possible mass atrocities.
• UN agencies are pushing for humanitarian access before conditions deteriorate further.

United Kingdom

• Requested the urgent debate at the United Nations Human Rights Council, highlighting growing Western concern over another possible humanitarian disaster.

Humanitarian organisations

• Aid agencies face increasing difficulties reaching civilians due to insecurity and siege conditions.

Regional countries

• Neighbours including Chad, South Sudan and Egypt remain vulnerable to additional refugee inflows and regional instability.

Future outlook

The immediate outlook depends on whether the RSF launches a full-scale assault on Al-Obeid or negotiations produce humanitarian access.

Possible scenarios include:

• Escalation: A major offensive could trigger another urban battle marked by heavy civilian casualties, infrastructure destruction and further displacement.
• Prolonged siege: Even without a direct assault, continued encirclement could deepen shortages of water, food and medicine, increasing disease and starvation risks.
• International pressure: The UN and Western governments may increase diplomatic pressure for humanitarian corridors, though previous efforts have had limited success.
• Limited accountability: Despite mounting documentation of alleged abuses by both sides, meaningful international enforcement remains difficult given the fragmented nature of the conflict.

Volker Türk’s warning reflects growing concern that Sudan’s conflict is entering another dangerous phase rather than improving. Al-Obeid represents more than a humanitarian hotspot—it is a strategic military objective whose capture could reshape the balance of power between the SAF and RSF.

The battle also illustrates a recurring pattern throughout the war: military gains are increasingly achieved through sieges, attacks on civilian infrastructure and restrictions on humanitarian access. These tactics magnify civilian suffering even before major ground offensives begin.

For the international community, the warning underscores a familiar challenge. The UN can document abuses and raise alarms, but translating those warnings into protection for civilians has repeatedly proven difficult. Without stronger diplomatic leverage or sustained international engagement, there is a significant risk that Al-Obeid could become the latest symbol of Sudan’s worsening humanitarian crisis rather than the point at which the conflict’s trajectory changes.

With information from Reuters.

The Israel-Lebanon framework agreement “threatens to betray the victims of war crimes” in Lebanon, according to six prominent human rights and media freedom organisations.

In a joint statement released on Friday by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), Legal Agenda, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Union of Journalists in Lebanon, they warned that parts of the agreement “appear to be aimed at preventing victims of serious international crimes from seeking justice before international forums”.

The organisations pointed out that clauses 3 and 13 of the agreement, brokered by and signed in the United States on June 26, were particularly concerning as they would “prevent Lebanon and Israel from having recourse to international courts, including the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice”.

The six organisations warned that “Clause 3 further violates international law and the prohibition of forced displacement, conditioning the return of residents to specified zones along the border, currently occupied by Israel, to the ‘successful disarmament of non-state armed groups and dismantlement of their infrastructure”.

“Under international humanitarian law, people must be allowed to return once hostilities have ended or the reasons for their displacement cease to exist,” their joint statement said.

The organisations said that Clause 13 was particularly concerning as it prevents civilians from “actions in international political or legal fora [forums]”. This comes after “months of hostilities resulting in immense civilian harm, including as a result of war crimes, violations of international humanitarian law, and gross human rights abuses”.

Many in Lebanon have protested and criticised the government for signing the agreement with Israel.

Many critics of the framework deal, which does not force the Israeli army to withdraw from the areas it occupies, are people most impacted by the war, which has killed at least 4,300 people, injured over 12,000 and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes since early March.

The six organisations said the US-brokered agreement appears to “contradict the countries’ international legal obligations to pursue accountability for serious international crimes committed on their territories,” although it “does not appear to commit Israel to halt any initiatives in international forums against Hezbollah”.

“Victims of war crimes and other violations deserve justice,” said Agnes Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International. “Any agreement that fails to center their rights to justice, accountability and reparations will falter underneath the very impunity it builds.”

Ghida Frangieh, head of litigation at Legal Agenda, added: “Accountability and respect for international law are not bargaining chips. They are legal obligations. International law is clear: States cannot waive or negotiate away their obligation to investigate and prosecute the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. Nor can states extinguish individual rights to truth, justice and reparation”.

But Lebanon’s President said on Friday that the framework deal with Israel “does not legitimise the continued Israeli occupation of Lebanon”, but instead empowers the Lebanese army to extend its authority across the country’s territory.

Joseph Aoun made the remarks during a meeting with a delegation from the Association of Lebanese Universities, the Lebanese Order of Physicians and the Lebanese Maronite Order, according to a statement from the presidency.

“Our sovereign decision to separate our track from the Iranian-US track is a problem for some who have become accustomed to being under guardianship that controls us, decides for us and negotiates on our behalf,” Aoun said, adding that the Lebanese army will “fully assume its responsibilities in achieving security and stability in the south after the withdrawal of Israeli forces”.

Meanwhile, with a “ceasefire” in Lebanon agreed on June 21 as part of a deal between Iran and the US, and the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement signed five days later, many displaced Lebanese have been returning to their homes in southern Lebanon.

In a report on Thursday, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said 646,107 IDPs (internally displaced persons) have begun returning to their communities, while about 500,000 others remain displaced, based on data collected with local authorities since June 22.

Lebanese authorities said they were working to remove informal encampments in and around capital Beirut and to reduce the number of official shelters.

However, many people in southern Lebanon said they have nowhere to return to, as dozens of towns and villages near the border have been destroyed by Israeli forces.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the military “will not leave” southern Lebanon as long as Hezbollah remains a “threat”. Hezbollah has rejected the deal with Israel as “null and void”, saying any attempt to link an Israeli withdrawal to its disarmament crossed “all red lines”.

WASHINGTON — Holiday gatherings and major life events have come with an empty seat. Certain dates on the calendar meant time at a cemetery, standing before granite stones.

They are a relatively small group of people, scattered across different states, but they share a common bond that stretches decades: Each had a family member die violently in the struggle for voting and civil rights, victims on a long and difficult path marked by blood that ended when the country seemed to mature into the nation of its creed.

But 61 years later, and as the country approaches its 250th anniversary this weekend, those sacrifices are in question. In a series of decisions over the last dozen years, including one in April, the Supreme Court has essentially dismantled the law that their family members died to see enacted, the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“My mother’s blood is on that bill. We were always proud of that, and now it’s gone,” said Anthony Liuzzo, whose mother, Viola Liuzzo, died on an Alabama highway between Selma and Montgomery while driving marchers in 1965.

Critics of the law contend that times have changed, an argument Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made in a 2013 decision that was the first major step in rolling back the law.

Survivors of lost loved ones disagree, pointing to the speed with which Republican-led state legislatures eliminated majority-Black congressional districts after the court’s April ruling, which severely weakened a section of the law that had protected voting rights for minority communities. They feel anger and sadness that a milestone political victory decades ago has been reversed, but they are committed to keep fighting.

A church bombing and a chunk of concrete

Lisa McNair was born Sept. 19, 1964. Her older sister, Denise, died in the Sept 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The church had been a central organizing point for civil rights protest.

The explosion killed Denise McNair, 11, and 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Morris Wesley. Nearly two dozen others were injured. Three Ku Klux Klansmen were convicted years later.

One of Lisa McNair’s early memories of her sister was of the box that their grandmother kept from the funeral home. It included Denise McNair’s shoes, a purse and a rock-sized piece of concrete that had been embedded in her skull.

The crime brought the civil rights struggle onto the national stage and outraged President Kennedy.

The times were tumultuous, McNair said, but it seemed the nation was heading in the right direction. Most of her life, “I’ve seen advances” on television, in commercials, with interracial marriages, civil rights and voting rights, “a plethora of rights that we got over the greater part of my lifetime.” But that has changed, she said.

McNair, 61, said she is “physically sick” about the Supreme Court decision and subsequent actions by lower courts and legislatures.

“I am constantly working to pray my way through it, so I can get up and go to work in the morning and do what I need to do. But I just want to ask every white person I see, ‘What more do you want?;” she said. “‘Why do you hate us so?’”

They left for Freedom Summer and never came home

Michael Schwerner, known as Mickey, came from a family in which human rights activism and challenging social norms were expected. He was in Mississippi in 1964 as part of Freedom Summer when he, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney vanished one day in June while investigating a bombing at a Black church.

Their bodies were found weeks later, buried in an earthen dam in a rural area of Neshoba County. Schwerner, 24, and Goodman, 20, were white; Chaney, 21, was Black.

Stephen Schwerner, who died earlier this year and was a social activist in his own right, told the Associated Press in a 2023 interview that as soon as the family heard his younger brother and the other men were missing, they knew they were dead.

“Our family was very out front in the media that the only reason there was international attention was two of the young men were white,” said Stephen’s daughter, Cassie Schwerner. “Had all three of those young men been Black, they would have ended up absent from our history and our narrative.”

The executive director of Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, Cassie Schwerner, said her family has followed voting rights through their ups and downs. That includes the 2013 Supreme Court decision that allowed states and counties with a history of discriminatory voting rules to make changes without prior approval from the Department of Justice.

The court’s April decision, she said, brought rage “and a good deal of sadness — not for me and my family, but for this country.” There is, she said, work to be done on multiple fronts.

Rights paid for in blood turned out to be fragile

Tamara Orange said among her many thoughts when she heard of the Supreme Court decision in this year’s Voting Rights Act case, there was relief — “relief that my dad is not here to see that; that Jimmie Lee Jackson is not here to see it; that Viola Liuzzo is not here to see it,” she said. “I’m relieved for them because to me, it’s as though the sacrifices that were made were done in vain.”

Her father, James Orange, was working with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize voting rights protests in Marion and Perry County, Ala., in 1965. When juveniles joined the effort, he was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of minors. Concern arose that Orange was going to be taken out of the jail and lynched.

A protest to intervene ended with Jackson, a 26-year-old Black church deacon, being shot in the stomach by a state trooper while Jackson tried to shield his mother and grandfather.

His death was the catalyst for what became the Selma-to-Montgomery march and “Bloody Sunday.”

Orange stayed in the movement all his life and died in 2008, Tamara Orange said. But even after the Voting Rights Act passed, “he would say, ‘Be careful or we’re going to lose it.’”

‘We got bad news for you’

Anthony Liuzzo had just turned 10 when his mother, 39, left their middle-class neighborhood in Michigan and headed for Selma. She had cried as she watched scenes from “Bloody Sunday” on television.

Viola Liuzzo participated in a portion of the second march and then helped drive other civil rights protesters around the Black Belt region of the state. On March 25, 1965, she was driving one protester between Selma and Montgomery when a vehicle pulled alongside and fired into the car.

The phone call came around midnight. Anthony Liuzzo remembers the caller asking his dad, “Is your wife Viola? We got bad news for you. She’s been shot.” When his father asked whether she was all right, the caller said, “No, she’s dead,” and then hung up.

An informant for the FBI quickly identified members of the Ku Klux Klan as her killers. The three men charged would escape conviction on state charges but be convicted in federal court.

Anthony Liuzzo and his siblings lived with the lost birthdays and other missed milestones. His comfort was that the voting rights she had died for had become a reality. But the April ruling by the Supreme Court and the subsequent rush by Republican-led legislatures in several Southern states to eliminate congressional districts represented by Black lawmakers left him angry and distraught.

Even so, he said he is still proud his mother had the courage to go to Selma “when others sat in their pretty little houses.”

One morning, the Klan returned

The inscription at the bottom of Vernon Dahmer Sr.’s tombstone reads simply: “If you don’t vote, you don’t count.”

It is a message that embodies his life’s work and the story behind his death.

Even after President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, not every state was eager to implement the new law. In Mississippi, it came with a poll tax. The amount was $2, but in a world where a farmworker’s wages might only be $5 a day, that was substantial, said Dahmer’s son, Dennis Dahmer Sr.

The elder Dahmer, 57 at the time of his death, was a successful businessman who owned a store, sawmill and farm near Hattiesburg. He also was a civil rights leader and NAACP president in Ford County. He offered to pay the $2 for Black residents who wanted to register to vote.

He had already been under scrutiny by the local Ku Klux Klan. There was harassment and there were threatening phone calls. The windows were shot out of his store, but no one challenged him directly because his sons were always present and armed.

That seemed to tail off after Johnson signed the law.

“The Klan quit calling,” Dennis Dahmer said. “They quit shooting out the windows, so my family thought that all of this was behind us.”

That changed in the early hours of Jan. 10, 1966, when two carloads of Klansmen showed up. They firebombed the house and adjacent grocery store and began shooting at the house. The elder Dahmer shot back, using his ample arsenal to fight off the attack.

His wife and the three children who were home survived, but he suffered severe injuries from inhaling the smoke and fumes from the flames. He died later that day.

Dennis Dahmer was 12 as he stood next to his dad’s hospital bed. He wondered why some people wanted his father dead just for trying to help Black people vote.

A former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Sam Bowers, was convicted in 1998 for the attack and sentenced to life in prison.

Like the families of other survivors, Dennis Dahmer’s family has witnessed the methodical dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

“Finally, they basically turned it into a relic,” he said.

His plan now is activism, to speak out and promote the need for a massive voter turnout. He also wants to remind people of the price that certain families paid for everyone to have the right to vote and be represented by someone of their choosing.

“We’re living in a time when America has a lot of the same characteristics of the 1960s that I grew up in,” he said. “People say, ‘Are we going back?’ Hell, we’re already there.”

Fields writes for the Associated Press.

Deaths of immigrants held in US detention centres have surged during Donald Trump’s second term.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, has called for an independent investigation into the severe uptick in deaths in migrant detention centres during President Donald Trump’s second term in office.

In a statement on Friday, Turk expressed concern over the lack of transparency over those deaths, at least 19 of which have occurred so far this year, according to US government statistics.

“Those responsible for violations of the law must be held to account, and the rights of the victims’ families to truth, justice and reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence must be upheld,” the UN rights chief said.

Deaths in immigrant detention centres have surged during Trump’s second term in office, a by-product of what rights groups and immigration lawyers have depicted as systematic neglect, inhumane conditions and abuses.

The Trump administration has sought to rapidly expand the network of immigrant detention centres, some operated by private contractors, as it seeks to carry out the mass deportation of immigrants in the US.

Trump stated in a social media post on Friday that his administration has the “Highest Average Daily Arrest Rate by ICE and CBP, including Total Detention, with Final Orders of Removal, than any other president, by far!”

The reported death of a Georgian man, Mamuka Artmeladze, in a detention facility in Louisiana on June 4 increased the number of fatalities so far this year to 19, compared to 33 last year and 11 in 2024.

“The mortality rate of deaths in ICE custody is at its highest level in over a decade and has more than doubled since Trump’s second term began,” the watchdog group Human Rights Watch wrote in a report on detention deaths earlier this month. “The rate is nearly four times that of the Biden administration and more than two and a half times as high as that of the first Trump administration.”

That report said the 52 people who have died in detention during Trump’s second term ranged in age from 19 to 75 and came from 20 different nationalities.

Turk wrote on Friday that there have been “concerning allegations regarding the use of force” at such facilities and that five of the deaths recorded in 2026 were classified as suicides.

He also expressed concern over the reported use of solitary confinement, which is associated with a heightened risk of suicide and considered a form of torture by the UN after a period of 15 days.

“All these factors exacerbate vulnerability and raise serious concerns as to whether some of these deaths in ICE custody could have been prevented,” he said.

WASHINGTON  — Prison inmates whose religious rights are clearly violated by guards and wardens may not sue them for damages, a divided Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices said federal law protecting religious liberty allows for suits against state prison systems, but not employees of the prison.

The decision came in the case of a devout Rastafarian in Louisiana. Damon Landor had grown dreadlocks for nearly two decades. He had three weeks left in a five-month prison term when he was transferred to another prison in Louisiana.

He had with him a copy of a federal appeals court opinion that said Rastafarian inmates had a protected religious right to wear dreadlocks.

Congress in 2000 adopted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act to protect religious liberty.

But the guards threw the appeals court decision in the trash, and the warden ordered the guards to handcuff Landor to a chair and shave his head.

Shortly after he was released, Landor sued the warden and the guards for violating the 2000 law, known as RLUIPA, which promised “appropriate relief” to those whose rights were violated.

But a federal judge, the 5th Circuit Court and now the Supreme Court have tossed out Landor’s suit.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote for the six conservatives.

He explained that when the federal government gives states money for prisons, education, healthcare and other matters, it can require them to follow the law but it does not authorize private lawsuits against their employees

“To know that is enough to know the Court of Appeals was correct. Mr. Landor does not have a federal RLUIPA cause of action against the officers,” Gorsuch wrote. “Congress lacks regulatory authority to impose liability on them directly.”

The three liberals dissented.

“Today’s decision magically transforms a federal statute into an invitation to be accepted or declined, deemed binding only if each particular defendant has explicitly agreed to be penalized,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Prisoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons — no matter how blatant — will often be left remediless.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed.

Civil liberties advocates denounced the decision.

“Our justice system is built on the promise of accountability when rights are violated,” said Rachel Rossi, president of the Alliance for Justice. “If there is no remedy for such a transgression, then there is no justice. This ruling will further erode critical civil rights protections of the far too many incarcerated people in this country.”

Rachel Laser, chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said today’s decision “endangers the religious freedom of incarcerated people, like Damon Landor, who are particularly vulnerable to abuse and having unnecessary burdens placed on their religious exercise. Once again, we see a court that will bend over backward for the religious freedom of Christians, but allows the government to trample the religious freedom of non-Christians.”

Those trapped in the compounds include Chinese, Philippine, Taiwanese, Malaysian and Brazilian nationals.

More than 5,300 people remain trapped in online scam centres in Myanmar near the Thai border, despite a multinational crackdown in the region last year, a human rights group says.

The Thai-based Civil Society Network for Human Trafficking Victim Assistance (CSNHTV) sent a letter to Thai police urging them to take action. It said many of those trapped were foreign nationals held at four locations inside areas controlled by the Myanmar Democratic Karen Buddhist Army militia.

According to the CSNHTV, an estimated 1,600 people trapped are Chinese nationals, and about 200 are people of Myanmar, along with people from the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brazil, Russia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.

“Many of these compounds have yet to be dismantled or subjected to rescue operations to free all remaining victims,” it said.

“As a result, these syndicates continue to engage in online fraud and human trafficking, causing harm to victims around the world, particularly in the United States and Europe.”

Scam centres in Southeast Asia, including those in Myanmar and Cambodia, run illegal online schemes that are designed to defraud people worldwide.

“Litany of abuse”

The centres grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic in the region, and were initially tied to poorly run casinos and online gambling. They have now become a multibillion-dollar industry, according to the United Nations.

A UN report in February said the facilities are mostly staffed by foreign nationals who have been trafficked by criminal gangs and subjected to abuse.

It found instances of “torture and other ill-treatment, sexual abuse and exploitation, forced abortions, food deprivation, solitary confinement, among other grave human rights abuses”.

“The litany of abuse is staggering and at the same time heart-breaking,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said.

“Yet, rather than receiving protection, care and rehabilitation as well as the pathways to justice and redress to which they are entitled, victims too often face disbelief, stigmatisation and even further punishment.”

New Delhi, India – On a searing hot afternoon in a dense working class neighbourhood of the Indian capital, Shehnaz Bano sits on the dilapidated floor of her one-room home, deftly stitching pieces for a new leather jacket.

To make each piece – a sleeve, a front or back panel or a shoulder yoke – the 38-year-old mother of two teenage sons spends hours, but is paid a mere 100 rupees (about $1) for each piece.

“Imagine if I was a regular employee and I did the same work for the same hours, but on a factory floor. I would have been paid more, right?” Bano asked.

“Just because I work from home, I don’t get equal pay or rights.”

That is because Bano, like nearly 260 million others across the world, is a home-based worker (HBW) – people employed to produce goods or services in or near their homes. The HBWs are part of what is referred to as the global informal economy. Such a form of employment is characterised by low wages, denial of workers’ rights, lack of social security or established hours of work, or paid leave.

The HBWs are also a highly-feminised workforce, with nearly 57 percent being women, according to a 2024 estimate by Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising (WIEGO), a United Kingdom-based global research organisation focused on improving conditions for the working poor, especially women, in the informal economy.

On this day 30 years ago, however, an effort was made to change the condition of the HBWs – with little success so far.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), a United Nations’ body, during a conference at its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, adopted the landmark “Convention 177”, or the Home Work Convention on June 20, 1996, recognising HBWs at the same level as traditional wage earners.

It was the first comprehensive call to set an international standard for the HBWs. The convention called upon ILO members to adopt and implement policies that promote equality of treatment between HBWs and other wage earners.

Convention 177 officially came into force on April 22, 2000.

However, only 13 countries have ratified it so far and none from South Asia. That is despite Asia and the Asia-Pacific regions accounting for the largest concentration of HBWs, as well as being the hub of global fashion and manufacturing supply chains.

Renana Jhabvala was in the room in Geneva – along with hundreds of government and non-government delegates – when the home-based worker Convention was adopted.

As a member of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a prominent Indian trade union of women workers, the 73-year-old activist was at the ILO’s International Labour Conference (ILC), and still remembers the exhilaration and optimism in the room.

“Discussions had gone on for nearly 21 days, but none of us knew whether the Convention would get adopted or not. We were all in a really big hall at the ILC… There was a majority in the final vote and the Convention got passed,” she told Al Jazeera.

But labour rights activists, experts and labour economists say a lack of recognition of the HBWs despite three decades of adopting the ILO convention has deepened structural inequalities among the workers, especially in a developing country like India.

According to them, the HBWs, especially women, remain largely “invisible” to the policymakers, while they are forced to work for inadequate wages under unsafe and exploitative working conditions.

“Convention 177 has been instrumental in recognising home work as ‘real work’ and home workers as workers entitled to labour rights,” Deepa Bharathi, a senior specialist of gender and non-discrimination at ILO’s Bangkok-based Decent Work Team, emailed Al Jazeera.

“In South Asia, home-based work is often embedded in complex subcontracting arrangements, making employment relationships difficult to identify and regulate. Challenges in labour inspection, gaps in data and the invisibility of home workers in policy frameworks have also slowed progress,” Bharathi said in response to a question on the low ratification of the Convention, particularly in South Asia.

With most home-based workers in the region being women, their work is often seen as an extension of household responsibility, Bharathi said. “This undervaluation, combined with broader gender inequalities, has been a significant barrier to ratification and implementation,” she added.

When asked about the ILO’s priorities for strengthening the Convention’s implementation, Bharathi said: “For women home-based workers in particular, the focus must remain on visibility, fair pay, social protection, safe working conditions, access to training and childcare and a stronger collective voice.”

‘I cannot go out and work’

Bano lives in New Delhi’s Kapashera area, a settlement of mainly migrant workers on the city’s southwestern edge whose name literally translates to a “cotton settlement” in English. The area is known for its cotton and leather garment manufacturing units.

In its congested alleys lie buildings that rent out single room units to informal worker families. In one such room lives Bano with her sons and her husband who works as a lift operator in an upscale mall in Gurugram, a business district housing several Fortune 500 companies on the outskirts of New Delhi.

Bano epitomises the arc of a typical HBW in India. She began working as a beedi (a tiny, hand-rolled cigarette) roller in her village in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh state’s Azamgarh district. After marriage, she joined her husband in New Delhi and took to stitching leather jacket pieces from home.

The move from her rural employment as a beedi roller to a piece-rate worker in the city did not change her continuing precarious situation: long hours, irregular work, low wages and work that leaves her eyes strained and fingers aching.

She is paid barely one dollar for her work on each piece of a leather jacket that is sold in a foreign market for $200 or more – more than double Bano’s average monthly income. Moreover, to cut costs and maximise profit, the contractors often split such work among several workers.

“Only those who are in distress do this kind of work. We have rent, bills, grocery and school fees to pay. How much will my husband do alone?” Bano told Al Jazeera.

The HBWs fall into two categories: own account workers with direct access to markets and piece rate workers who are usually employed through intermediaries. Bano belongs to the latter, which is considered more vulnerable due to low and arbitrary piece rate payments.

In another corner of Kapashera, Sangeeta Devi, 30, puts the final touches – buttoning, repairing, finishing – before the garments she makes return to the factories.

She is doing all this inside an 8×8 foot (2.4m) room, where her family of six, including four schoolchildren sleep, eat, work and study. She cooks, cleans and even bathes in the same room.

“I cannot go out and work because then who will take care of my children?”

“On any given day, there are 100 pieces of clothing in this tiny room. Each time, I have to keep them aside while doing household chores,” the migrant worker from Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, told Al Jazeera.

Sangeeta Devi gets a dollar for every 100 garment pieces she completes.

“I really want to do a job where I can work easily from home, take care of my children and get paid well. I don’t know if that’s even possible,” she told Al Jazeera.

Her neighbour, Putul Devi, does similar work and earns about $20 a month.

“I have been cooking on firewood because of high fuel costs. And when it rains, I don’t know what to save from spoiling – the firewood or the cloth pieces that I bring home,” she told Al Jazeera.

Shalini Sinha, home-based work sector specialist at WIEGO, said female HBWs in India face “continued invisibility” even after three decades of recognition of their work.

“Home continues to be seen as a place of habitat and not as a place of work,” Sinha told Al Jazeera.

“There is also the broader issue of women’s economic work not being adequately recognised in labour discourse when it is done from home. It is often seen as an extension of her care work,” she added.

From an Indian perspective, said Sinha, there is an “urgent need for better statistics and a dedicated policy or law for home-based workers, which still does not exist”.

Elizabeth Khumallambam, who works for Community for Social Change and Development (CSCD), an NGO that works with women HBWs in Kapashera, said a social security code introduced in India in 2020 mentions HBWs, but “no one knows” how it will be implemented on the ground.

Introduced as part of India’s labour reform laws, the code consolidated nine social security-related laws into a single framework to ensure social security protection for all workers, including those in the unorganised sector.

“Frankly, for us the challenge begins at making workers understand the value of their own work. Many don’t consider this as work and so they do not think it needs due rights and protection,” Khumallambam told Al Jazeera.

Alakh N Sharma, a labour economist and director at New Delhi-based non-profit, the Institute for Human Development, said there is a “bias in the system”, due to which women’s work is being left behind in statistics and official counting.

According to him, technology-aided counting, probing questions and sensitivity among investigators, could help in addressing the statistical blind spot.

“Safety concerns, mobility constraints and social norms – all these factors stop women from joining formal workplace-based employment. But the single biggest reason is often care work responsibility, particularly childcare,” Sharma told Al Jazeera.

In 2022, Sandosh Kumar P, a Communist Party of India (CPI) parliamentarian moved a legislation aimed at the welfare of the BHWs, but the parliament did not take it up for discussion.

In December 2024, India’s ministry of labour and employment was again asked in parliament whether it has an official assessment of the HBWs, and if it was proposing to enact a law on them. It replied that the Code on Social Security 2020 provides social security to the unorganised workers, including the HBWs. It also said the government has created a national database of such workers.

Looking back at the 30 years since the historic recognition of HBWs, Jhabvala said she did not view such Conventions or laws from the lens of success or failure.

“It is like a weapon, a tool of change. If we want to fight, this option is available,” she said.

Former US President Barack Obama opened his presidential centre in Chicago, using the occasion to call for unity, urging Americans to reject division and invest in the next generation.

WASHINGTON  — A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Thursday for gun rights and against drug laws.

In a 9-0 ruling, the justices struck down part of the longstanding federal gun control law that makes it a crime for an “unlawful user” of illegal drugs to possess a gun.

The Trump administration had urged the court to uphold the conviction of a Texas man who was investigated for alleged terrorist ties and admitted to being a regular user of marijuana.

Rejecting that claim, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, speaking for the court, said the law was far too broad and overly harsh.

“The law automatically bans an individual from possessing a gun from the moment he becomes an unlawful user of any controlled substance until he ceases being one,” he wrote. “It doesn’t matter what controlled substance an individual uses, in what amounts he does so, or whether his drug use has ever made him a danger to himself or others.”

And it can lead to a 15-year prison term, he added.

He noted, however, the court was not ruling on “addicts” or people who were under the influence of drugs when they were arrested.

The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the ruling.

“Today’s unanimous 9-0 decision makes it clear that the government cannot make it crime for people to own a gun, which the Supreme Court has held is a fundamental constitutional right, simply because they use marijuana,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union. “With nearly half of Americans reporting marijuana use at some point in their lives, this ruling protects the rights of millions and curbs the government’s ability to impose arbitrary and discriminatory penalties.”

Since 1968, federal law has prohibited gun possession by felons, fugitives and other persons deemed to be dangerous. Included was anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”

But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a Texas case this restriction on guns violated the 2nd Amendment. It said “there is no historical justification for disarming a sober citizen not presently under an impairing influence.”

Appealing to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration urged the justices to uphold the law.

“Habitual illegal drug users with firearms present unique dangers to society—especially because they pose a grave risk of armed, hostile encounters with police officers while impaired,” said Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer.

He asked the court to rule in the case of a Pakistani native who was investigated by the FBI for his suspected ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In 2020, Ali Danial Hemani and his parents “traveled to Iran to participate in a celebration of the life of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian general and terrorist who had been killed by an American drone strike the month before,” the administration told the court last year.

The FBI obtained a warrant to search Hemani’s family home.

Agents found a Glock 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana and 4.7 grams of cocaine.

Hemani said he used marijuana about every other day.

A federal grand jury in Texas charged him with possessing a firearm as an unlawful habitual user of marijuana.

Toronto, Canada – When Diana Gallego listened to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s widely touted speech at the World Economic Forum at the start of this year, she couldn’t help but feel a disconnect.

Carney had made an impassioned plea to the world’s “middle powers” to break with a United States-led international order that he said was no longer working, and his words found receptive audiences around the world.

But for Gallego, co-executive director of FCJ Refugee Centre, an organisation that supports refugees and asylum seekers in Canada’s largest city, the prime minister’s statements rang hollow amid his government’s hardening approach to immigration.

“We saw the [prime] minister going to Davos [with] this beautiful discourse, saying we should not copy our neighbours … But internally, the policies are telling us another story,” Gallego told Al Jazeera. “Canada is closing the doors now.”

Gallego is among more than a dozen experts – from lawyers to professors, rights advocates and former government officials – who told Al Jazeera that Canada is at a “troubling” crossroads in its policies towards migrants and refugees.

As Canadians have grappled with rising economic and social pressures in recent years, a decades-old consensus on the benefits of immigration has frayed.

Hostile rhetoric blaming newcomers for Canada’s ills has intensified, and Carney’s government has slashed temporary visas and restricted access to asylum. Experts say a “generational shift” is under way.

“The general rhetoric is, ‘We don’t want you here’,” said Gallego.

Influx in temporary migration

A settler-colonial state, Canada has encouraged successive waves of immigration throughout its history, from largely European settlement in the early to mid-1900s to specialised programmes that brought refugees and high- and low-skilled workers to Canadian shores.

For decades, that influx of newcomers was widely viewed as a positive thing: immigration was fuelling the country’s economy, staffing key job sectors and counteracting a rapidly ageing population.

But over the past few years, Canada has seen one of the most dramatic shifts in how the public views immigration – and the government has tapped into increasingly negative sentiment to cut programmes and pass new, restrictive laws.

The policy changes began under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose Liberal Party government had dramatically increased temporary immigration during the COVID-19 pandemic to fill labour market gaps.

The figures shot up rapidly and, by October 2024, there were nearly 3.15 million non-permanent residents in Canada, accounting for roughly 8 percent of the population, according to official figures.

At the same time, systemic issues – from a shortage of affordable housing to high grocery costs and long hospital wait times – were putting the squeeze on many Canadian households.

Public attitudes quickly hardened, and a 2024 poll (PDF) found a majority of Canadians saying for the first time in decades that there was “too much immigration”.

Since then, several incidents of xenophobic violence have been reported, including in some of Canada’s largest cities, where the influx of migrants has been among the most visible.

Under pressure as angry discourse soared, the Trudeau government promised in 2024 to get immigration back to “sustainable” levels, and the cuts began, including most notably to international student visas.

“The reality is that not everyone who wants to come to Canada will be able to – just like not everyone who wants to stay in Canada will be able to,” Marc Miller, Canada’s former immigration minister, said in September that year.

‘Erroneous beliefs’

The numbers of arrivals dropped quickly as student and work visas were cancelled, forcing thousands of people to leave Canada or remain without legal status. By the start of this year, non-permanent residents totalled about 2.67 million, according to government figures, a 15 percent drop from the peak in October 2024.

“I don’t think you can blame the housing crisis in Canada on immigration, but there’s no doubt that the radically increased numbers under Justin Trudeau’s regime had a political effect,” Allan Rock, a former Canadian justice minister and Liberal lawmaker, told Al Jazeera.

The government, Rock explained, has been “reading the room and sensing that Canadians were connecting local economic and financial difficulties with migration”.

At the same time, right-wing politicians have seized on those public attitudes, with the opposition Conservative Party earlier this year pushing the governing Liberals to cut healthcare for people it described as “fake refugees”.

The Conservatives, also, have echoed US President Donald Trump in advocating for changes to “birthright citizenship”, claiming that the “outdated rule” that grants citizenship to anyone born in Canada “presents yet another strain on our immigration system that Canada can’t handle”.

“With over 7 per cent of Canada’s population here on temporary status – and arrivals massively outpacing the capacity of our housing, healthcare and jobs markets – something needs to change,” the party said.

Rights advocates have denounced that rhetoric while accusing policymakers of falsely linking migrants and refugees to social problems to absolve themselves of responsibility for a years-long failure to properly fund healthcare, education and other services.

On the housing issue, for instance, experts have found (PDF) that, while immigration increases demand for housing stock, its effect on prices is far less important than public discourse would have people believe.

“Leadership means not simply caving into public opinion when it’s based on erroneous beliefs,” Rock told Al Jazeera. “We’re buying into, and we’re supporting, a growing international trend to tighten borders and build walls and validate erroneous beliefs about refugees and migrants.”

“It’s a betrayal of values that this country has always stood for, and I find it troubling.”

Carney doubles down

Yet, since taking office in April 2025, Carney – the prime minister – has continued where his predecessor Trudeau left off on immigration.

In late March, Carney’s Liberal government passed a sweeping new law that grants Ottawa the power to cancel visas en masse, including for permanent residents, if it deems it in the “public interest” to do so.

The law, known as Bill C-12, also restricts access to Canada’s refugee status determination system in ways that lawyers told Al Jazeera are “arbitrary” and likely run counter to the country’s constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The government has justified the measure – which is expected to face a constitutional challenge in court – as part of an effort to streamline a backlogged asylum system and prevent “fraud”.

At the end of last year, nearly 300,000 cases were pending at the independent tribunal that adjudicates refugee claims in the country, known as the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB).

A spokesperson for Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the federal immigration department, told Al Jazeera that it had introduced Bill C-12 “as global migration pressures intensify”.

The law introduces “measures to address challenges such as sudden increases in asylum claims and situations where existing processes may be used to circumvent regular immigration pathways”, the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

“This means we can provide faster protection for those in need,” they said, adding that Bill C-12 also respects Canada’s obligations under the United Nations Refugee Convention as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But experts say the law will do little to address the backlog at the IRB. They have also accused lawmakers of failing to dispel – and even of playing into – xenophobic rhetoric rather than addressing the real concerns of Canadians or structural problems in the asylum system.

The government is “creating this sense in the public that people are scamming us, they’re taking advantage of the system [and] there’s something broken that needs to be fixed”, said Julia Sande, a lawyer at Amnesty International Canada.

“People’s struggles are real. People are facing a housing crisis, inflation and unemployment, wage stagnation and widening inequality,” she told Al Jazeera.

“Then, instead of taking responsibility or making the changes needed to address these things, governments look for a group to blame – and who’s better to blame than people who don’t have the right to vote and can’t vote you out?”

Carney’s ‘honeymoon’ phase

Despite such concerns raised by rights advocates, Canada’s changing immigration policies do not appear to have drawn much attention – or pushback – from the wider public.

A wide-reaching effort by civil society groups earlier this year to get the government to make amendments to Bill C-12 failed to secure any meaningful changes.

In addition to that law, the Carney government also has rolled back a healthcare programme for refugees, extended a freeze on refugee resettlement applications, and announced significant funding cuts to several ministries, including the immigration department.

Planned cuts at the IRB – the board that adjudicates refugee claims – have also been reported, fuelling concerns that delays may get worse.

“The fact that there is no real plan in place to deal with this backlog [at the IRB] then contributes to negative opinion by the public about refugees,” said Maureen Silcoff, a refugee lawyer who previously served as a member of the tribunal.

“I think the government has a responsibility to proactively undo some of the myths that are circulating,” Silcoff told Al Jazeera. “This is especially important in times where we see in other countries that there’s a surge of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric.”

Nevertheless, Carney continues to enjoy high approval ratings as he has justified government policies during his first year in office as part of an “elbows up” response to pressure from the Trump administration.

“The Carney government still seems to be [enjoying] a honeymoon of sorts,” said John Carlaw, an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University who specialises in Canadian politics and immigration.

“We’re seeing a major withdrawal of social spending and then an investment in militarism and border enforcement,” Carlaw told Al Jazeera, describing it as a “troubling period” in Canada.

“I think C-12 really showed the government is not interested in hearing from communities that work with migrants and immigrants to make policies that are consistent with a human rights framework. They just don’t want to listen to dissent.”

‘Not immune’ to backsliding on human rights

Despite that, rights advocates say they will continue to push back against the direction Canada is heading on immigration.

“We can’t stop fighting,” Luisa Ortiz-Garza, a migrant rights organiser at Parkdale Community Legal Services, told a packed gymnasium at Trinity-St Paul’s United Church in downtown Toronto in late April.

Several dozen people joined the event, dubbed “No More Divide and Rule”, to denounce xenophobia and urge the government to grant legal immigration status for all migrants and refugees in Canada.

“What [the government is] doing is actually just putting people against each other,” Ortiz-Garza told Al Jazeera in an interview at her organisation’s office a few days before the gathering.

“It’s citizens against migrants [and] migrants against migrants because there is this idea that some migrants did things right and other migrants just jumped the queue or abused the system,” she said.

“We’re trying to have these conversations and bring people together: allies, citizens, migrants … so that we can actually talk about this and remind people about unity.”

That was echoed by Sande at Amnesty International, who warned that Canada is “not immune” to a backsliding on human rights. “Things will just continue to get worse until governments feel they’re held to account,” she said. “Yes, scapegoating may start with migrants, but it never ends there.”

THE EU is in the midst of making huge changes when it comes to air travel and all of them will greatly benefit passengers.

These include no extra fees, better compensation rights and families heading on holiday can sit together at no extra charge – but now we’re out of the EU, the new rights will only carry weight for Brits on certain flights.

The new regulations were agreed by the EU Council and Parliament yesterday, making it the first overhaul in over 20 years and will come into play in 2027.

Some of the biggest changes include allowing families to sit together at no extra cost, as well as passengers having a free personal item to take onboard.

There also won’t be penalties for missing one leg of a booking, and hand luggage costs will be shown upfront in the fare.

There will also be a ban on additional fees for alterations like name correction.

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It will be easier for passengers to get money back for delays or cancellations too.

Airlines will need to immediately acknowledge a claim and then reply within 30 days.

For those who experience delays, there is a right to assistance which includes refreshments every two hours of waiting time, a meal after three hours, internet access and phone calls.

When passengers need overnight stays, they should be given the hotel free of charge and get free transport from the airport to the accommodation and back.

After a cancelled flight or denied boarding, passengers who choose to reroute must be given an alternative journey within three hours.

This all sounds great doesn’t it? Well, there is some bad news – this won’t count for all British travellers leaving the UK.

As a result of Brexit, British holidaymakers won’t necessarily benefit from this as in some cases their flights will fall under passenger rights called UK261.

Whereas for those living in the EU, the new regulations count for all.

For Brits heading on holiday, taking advantage of these EU changes will depend on the route and the airline.

For example, a flight leaving the UK for Malaga with Ryanair will fall under EU rules as Ryanair is an EU airline.

The Malaga to UK return leg will also be under the EU rules – on the return journey, it doesn’t matter if the airline is EU or non-EU, because the flight departs from the EU.

Along with Ryanair, the likes of Wizz Air, easyJet and Lufthansa are all EU-airlines so the new rules automatically count for Brits on both journeys to EU countries.

There will however, be a gap on flights leaving the UK on a non-EU airline.

For example, if a British passenger flies from London to Madrid on a UK airline like British Airways, that outbound leg would remain under UK261 rules rather than the new EU regulations.

But the return would fall under the EU rules because it departs from Madrid in the EU.

So Brits heading on holiday will only get the new benefits if they are travelling on EU-covered flights.

They will not get them automatically on all flights from UK airports.

UK-airlines like British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Jet2 won’t fall under the new EU rules.

But these do have their own guidelines and policies regarding families sitting together and luggage costs.

AirAdvisor CEO Anton Radchenko, a renowned aviation lawyer, added: “This agreement is a meaningful step forward for European passengers, and it throws the position of UK travellers into sharp relief.

“For the first time since Brexit, we are looking at a real divergence in the
everyday rights of passengers flying from the UK versus those flying
from the EU.

“The headline compensation amounts remain broadly aligned,
but on the things passengers deal with on every single trip, being
penalised for a missed leg, paying to sit next to your own child,
comparing fares that hide the cost of a bag, EU travellers are about
to pull ahead, and UK travellers are at risk of being left behind.”

June 10 (Asia Today) — Senior U.S. human rights officials visiting South Korea met over two days with families of South Koreans detained or abducted by North Korea, civic groups said Wednesday.

The meetings included families of South Korean missionaries detained in North Korea, wartime and postwar abductees and prisoners of war who were not repatriated after the Korean War.

Riley M. Barnes, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, met Tuesday with Choi Jin-young, the son of South Korean missionary Choi Chun-gil, who is being held in North Korea, according to civic groups.

Julie Turner, acting deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and Belsis Romero, a White House faith liaison, also took part in the visit.

On Wednesday, U.S. officials met representatives of groups representing families of Korean War abductees, postwar abductees and prisoners of war.

The U.S. officials told the families that Washington continues to pay attention to the issue and that its position has not changed on supporting efforts to confirm the detainees’ status and seek their return, according to the groups.

Choi thanked Barnes for calling for the release of South Koreans detained in North Korea, including missionaries Kim Jung-wook, Kim Kuk-gi and Choi Chun-gil, during a video message last month for an international conference announcing the formation of the Republic of Korea Hostage Family Association.

Choi also delivered a letter addressed to President Donald Trump asking the United States to make the safe return of South Korean detainees, including the three missionaries, part of its North Korea diplomacy.

He also delivered 10,000 signatures gathered online and offline, largely through Korean churches in Los Angeles, calling for the detainees’ repatriation and confirmation of whether they are alive.

Kim Jung-sam, the older brother of missionary Kim Jung-wook, also sent a letter asking Trump to speak out during his presidency on detainees and religious freedom.

Choi said he asked U.S. officials to send a message that Washington has not forgotten the detained missionaries.

“I asked that the U.S. ambassador, the secretary of state or the president meet from time to time with families of South Korean abductees, detainees and prisoners of war,” Choi said. “In that context, I also requested that the U.S. ambassador to South Korea attend an event for Abductees Remembrance Day.”

Lee Sung-eui, head of the Korean War Abductees’ Family Union, Choi Sung-ryong, head of the Association of the Families of Postwar Abductees, and Sohn Myung-hwa, head of a group representing families of prisoners of war, met Turner on Wednesday and urged continued U.S. attention to the abduction issue.

Lee delivered a letter asking Washington to place humanitarian issues first in any future U.S.-North Korea talks, including the return of detained South Koreans, confirmation of the fate of abductees and visits by bereaved families to graves in North Korea.

Lee said he emphasized that wartime abductions during the 1950-53 Korean War were “the root of all forced disappearance crimes committed by North Korea.”

Barnes and Turner also met Saturday with Son Hyun-bo, pastor of Segero Church, who led rallies opposing the impeachment of former President Yoon Suk Yeol. The U.S. officials discussed religious freedom issues in South Korea and attended a Sunday worship service.

On Monday, the U.S. delegation also met Chang Wook-jin, director-general for global multilateral diplomacy at South Korea’s Foreign Ministry, to discuss bilateral efforts to promote democracy and human rights.

A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said the U.S. State Department regularly communicates with a wide range of stakeholders inside and outside South Korea while preparing annual reports on human rights, trafficking in persons and international religious freedom.

The official said the delegation’s visit to South Korea was part of that regular outreach.

A civic group official who recently visited the United States and met State Department officials said the bureau’s meeting with families of North Korean detainees appeared connected to Washington’s recent attention to religious persecution.

The official said U.S. officials also asked questions during a recent meeting about religious freedom and human rights issues involving the South Korean government.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260610010003179

The Delhi High Court grants bail to Kashmiri rights activist Khurram Parvez, jailed in India for nearly five years.

New Delhi, India — A prominent Kashmiri human rights activist who has been imprisoned for nearly five years has won a partial legal victory after being granted bail in a “terror funding” case, but remains in jail over a second case.

The Delhi High Court granted Khurram Parvez, 49, bail in a November 2021 case on Wednesday, according to legal website LiveLaw. However, he will remain in jail in a separate case from March 2023.

Parvez was first arrested about five years ago by India’s main counterterrorism law enforcement bureau, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), over accusations of “terror funding”, recruitment of rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir and mobilising protesters during a civilian uprising. The second case is also related to alleged “terror funding”.

International rights groups have widely condemned Parvez’s arrest and continued imprisonment.

His lawyer, Swati Khanna, said she hoped Parvez could be freed from jail soon if there was a “positive result” in the second case.

“We are hoping, in a month or two, he could be out,” she told reporters.

The trial has not begun in either of the cases – an issue highlighted by international rights organisations, which say the process becomes the punishment for political prisoners in India who have to wait years behind bars before even facing trial.

The conviction rate in the counterterror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), remains low at 5 percent nationally. It dips further, to less than 1 percent, when it comes to Indian-administered Kashmir.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has been criticised for persecuting dissent and criminalising expression in Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority region.

“Khurram’s arrest proved to be the last nail in the coffin of any meaningful rights activism in Kashmir, one of the world’s most militarised zones,” said a political analyst based in Srinagar, Kashmir, who requested anonymity fearing repercussions from the authorities.

“This bail comes in a completely shallow, and nearly fictitious, trumped-up case after years in jail, and Khurram would still not walk free.”

Kashmir remains disputed between India, Pakistan, and China, which control parts of the region. Pakistan controls the northern and western portions – Azad Kashmir; and Gilgit and Baltistan. India controls the southern and southeastern parts – the Kashmir valley, including its biggest city, Srinagar; Jammu; and Ladakh. China controls the Aksai Chin area in the northeast.

The two neighbours have fought three major wars over Kashmir since the end of British colonial rule and their partition in 1947 led to the creation of Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. Both countries continue to assert claims to the entire region of Kashmir.

At least 11 people were killed on Sunday during clashes between police and protesters in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s Rawalakot city, capital of Poonch district, before a major demonstration scheduled by a banned civil society group for Tuesday.

Authorities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir deployed federal paramilitary troops and issued a strict travel advisory before the Tuesday protest, which has gone ahead despite the restrictions.

Here is what we know about the latest unrest.

What’s happening in Pakistan-administered Kashmir?

Eleven people have been killed in clashes between the police and protesters, while more than 70 have been injured. The ban on the organisation, alongside regional grievances, set off the protests.

On Tuesday, Sardar Waheed Khan, commissioner of the Pakistan side of the Poonch district, a militarised region shared between Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, told the news agency Reuters that four police officers and a passer-by died “after miscreants shot at them”. Six protesters were killed, he said.

Police Chief Liaqat Malik said 23 security officials and 50 protesters were among those injured in Sunday’s clashes.

On Friday, local authorities issued an advisory urging visitors to avoid travelling to the area.

“The measure is advised to save intending visitors from any unexpected situation or inconvenience,” an unnamed official said in a statement issued by the region’s Press Information Department (PID).

“The government also requests those already in the territory for sightseeing or any other purpose to leave by Friday evening so that they do not confront any unpleasant situation,” the statement added.

Kashmir is a disputed Himalayan region which is claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, with China also controlling a portion of the territory. Pakistan-administered Kashmir – known locally as Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) – is governed under a semi-autonomous system, with its own prime minister and legislative assembly, but ultimate authority resting with Islamabad. Its population exceeds four million people, according to the 2017 census. It is separated from India-administered Kashmir by what is known as the Line of Control (LoC).

The LoC is the 740km (459-mile) military border dividing the disputed Kashmir region between Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered territories.

Who is behind the protests?

The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) is a grassroots umbrella organisation that emerged in 2023 as the leader of a protest movement across the Pakistani-administered part of the region. The JAAC, led by activist Shaukat Nawaz Mir, represents traders and civil society groups.

On Friday, the local government proscribed the JAAC under a regional legislative framework in Pakistan-administered Kashmir called the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2014.

In a circular, the government’s home department claimed the JAAC “is engaged in terrorism, acted in a manner prejudicial to the peace & security of the State, involved in creating anarchy in the State by intimidating public, promoting hatred & creating sense of insecurity in society and public at large, etc”.

In the past, protests organised by the JAAC have led to violent clashes between protesters and security forces, leading to casualties.

In a video message on X responding to Sunday’s incident, Mir accused the authorities of unleashing violence in Rawalakot, saying, “The state has begun a massacre of our people in Rawalakot.”

In response, Khan, the commissioner of Pakistani Poonch, said, “The JAAC leadership is misleading the masses by terming it a massacre. The state’s action was meant to restore law and order.”

On Tuesday, the internet monitoring group NetBlocks said that its data showed that access to the web remained severely restricted in Pakistan-administered Kashmir for a third day in a row.

What is the trigger behind these protests?

These protests are against the reservation of 12 seats in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s legislature for refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir who now live in other parts of Pakistan. If the refugees live in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, they are not eligible to contest for these reserved seats.

The region votes on July 27 to elect its next legislature, which has 45 seats in all — including the 12 reserved ones.

The JAAC is calling for the abolition of the reserved seats, arguing that all seats in the legislature must go to those who actually reside in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and not those living in other constituencies scattered across Pakistan.

Abdul Jabbar Nasir, a journalist currently based in Karachi, but originally from a village near the LoC in the Gilgit Baltistan area, which is the majority of the Pakistan-administered Kashmir region, told Al Jazeera that the seats are reserved for those who migrated from Indian-administered Kashmir to Karachi or any other part of Pakistan in 1947.

Nasir explained that the reserved seats have existed in various forms since the late 1940s and were formalised in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s 1974 interim constitution, which treats the region as a self-governing, autonomous state, with its own prime minister, president and courts, while defence, foreign affairs, currency and communications remain under Pakistan’s control.

“If the constitutional protection provided begins to be changed by these protesters, then I don’t think things can function,” Nasir said.

“It is essential for these seats to exist. If we abolish them, on one hand, Pakistan’s own case for Kashmiri statehood in the United Nations will be weakened, and India’s case will be strengthened,” he added.

He drew a parallel with India, noting that New Delhi historically kept a number of seats vacant in its parliament and the former Jammu and Kashmir assembly as a way of asserting that those bodies represented the entire former princely state, including areas under Pakistani control. If Pakistan now dismantles refugee representation in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, he warned, India could argue that both countries have effectively “regularised” their control over their respective portions of the disputed region.

Marathon talks between a federal ministerial team, including leaders from Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and JAAC leadership in late May failed to yield a breakthrough. This resulted in the JAAC announcing that the protest on Tuesday would proceed as planned.

On Sunday, a top court in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, called the Supreme Court of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, ruled that the 12 reserved seats are constitutionally protected, and a constitutional amendment would be needed to abolish the reservation.

“This ruling effectively closed the legal route for groups seeking to challenge the existing arrangement and intensified calls for protest by the [JAAC],” Raja Qaiser Ahmed, director for the Area Study Centre for Africa, North and South America at the Islamabad-based Quaid-i-Azam University, told Al Jazeera.

What are the deeper issues?

Experts say the current crisis is part of a deeper, long-running debate about governance, political representation, resource allocation and regional autonomy in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The protest on Tuesday is the fourth such protest led by the JAAC.

“The current crisis reflects a broader and longer-term debate about governance, political representation, resource distribution, and regional autonomy in AJK,” Ahmed said.

“While the refugee-seat issue has become the focal point of the present mobilisation, it is intertwined with wider grievances that have surfaced repeatedly over the past several years.”

In September and October 2025, the JAAC officially released a comprehensive 38-point charter of demands and initiated a lockdown. The government, in response to a lockdown initiated by JAAC, imposed a complete communications blackout.

The protests had their roots in May 2023, when residents first protested skyrocketing electricity bills alongside widespread flour smuggling and acute shortages in subsidised wheat supplies. The movement hit its first major flashpoint in May 2024, when protesters set off on a long march towards Muzaffarabad. The ensuing violent clashes left at least five people dead, among them a police officer.

The 38-point charter remains the focal point of current tensions. The demands of the charter include economic subsidies, investigation of corrupt officials, social welfare and infrastructure, as well as the abolition of the 12 reserved seats.

Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, chairman of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), the party with the most seats in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s Legislative Assembly, said on Sunday that he would meet Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to discuss the ongoing tensions in the region.

“Thirty-five out of 38 demands have been implemented,” Bhutto-Zardari said during a news conference in Islamabad, explaining that the rest of the demands are not feasible or have court orders barring their implementation.

“More fundamentally, the protests reveal an ongoing tension between constitutional arrangements linked to the broader Kashmir dispute and growing demands for greater local accountability and political participation,” Ahmed said.

“The debate is therefore not only about a specific set of assembly seats but also about competing visions of representation, governance, and the future political trajectory of the region.”

SACRAMENTO — Disability rights advocates on Monday gathered outside the state Capitol to push back on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed cuts to in-home supportive services.

“These aren’t just numbers in a budget; these are real people,” said Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez (R-Indio). “These are children, seniors, veterans and individuals with disabilities whose independence and quality of life depend on these services every single day.”

The In-Home Supportive Services program helps disabled and elderly people remain in their houses by providing in-home care. It pays assistants to help with tasks such as showering, cooking or attending doctor appointments. Newsom’s revised budget proposal, which was unveiled last month, would cut $367.7 million from the program and shift some of that financial burden onto counties.

Gonzalez explained that the issue hits close to home for his family. He said his son has cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder, and relies on assistance to live with dignity.

“Families should not have to wonder every budget season whether the support they rely on will be taken away,” Gonzalez said. “These services should not be treated as bargaining chips in budget negotiations.”

Assemblymember Laurie Davies (R-Laguna Niguel) questioned why a successful state like California would need to enact such cuts.

“It’s hard to go a day without hearing the governor or the administration brag about how we are the fourth-largest economy in the world and yet we can’t fully fund [this program for] the most vulnerable?” Davies said.

The governor has previously explained that difficult decisions must be made as the state could soon face an economic downturn. The budget proposal relies on a tax windfall, largely attributed to the stock market success of artificial intelligence companies, to erase California’s deficit — but some analysts have warned that the AI bubble could burst.

H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs for the California Department of Finance, on Monday said some of the proposed cuts are a byproduct of the federal government’s changes in funding and eligibility for health and human services programs.

The so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” signed by President Trump last year shifted federal funding away from safety-net programs, he said.

Palmer stressed that state budget negotiations are ongoing.

“Until we land on an agreement, speculation regarding the resolution of any specific differences between the Governor’s budget plan or the Legislature’s respective budget proposals would be premature,” he stated by email.

Monday’s event drew some bipartisan support. Brody Fernandez, communications director for Assemblymember Esmeralda Z. Soria (D-Fresno), said the legislator had been fighting for In-Home Supportive Services funding since she was elected.

Fernandez said his daughter has special needs and her mother had to give up her career to become a full-time caregiver. “This is personal for us and for many of the incredible individuals standing behind me,” he said.

Graham Knaus, chief executive of the California State Assn. of Counties, told The Times that he appreciated efforts to raise awareness about the burden these changes would place on counties.

“We applaud the Senate and Assembly for recognizing counties’ concerns and rejecting this proposal,” he said. “We ask them to hold the line in final negotiations.”

Elizabette Guecamburu, a bookkeeper who has a rare neuromuscular disorder, spoke at Monday’s rally and implored the governor to remember the teachings of their shared alma mater Santa Clara University, a Jesuit-led private school.

“I want him to remember where he came from,” she said, adding that students were taught to value compassion and community. “Don’t forget your Jesuit roots.”

Volker Turk, the high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, has issued some of his harshest criticism yet of the recent sanctions the United States has imposed on Cuba.

On Monday, Turk drew a line between the increasing restrictions on the Cuban economy and reports of heightened death rates, particularly among children.

“The fuel restrictions imposed since early 2026 and recent tightening of extraterritorial sanctions, taken together, are directly harming Cubans, especially the most vulnerable,” Turk said in a statement.

“Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable.”

Such “severe sanctions”, he added, run contrary to the “basic principles of international human rights law”. He called for them to be “lifted immediately”.

Turk’s comments are a direct response to the suite of actions taken under US President Donald Trump to tighten pressure on Cuba, a Caribbean island that has already weathered a decades-long US trade embargo.

Starting in January, the Trump administration moved to cut off Cuba’s foreign oil supply, a linchpin for its ageing energy grid.

First, it severed supplies of oil and funds from Venezuela. Then, on January 29, Trump issued an executive order declaring Cuba to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security. As such, he said, any country that supplied it with oil would be subject to steep tariffs.

In the months since, the Trump administration has continued to layer sanctions on Cuba. In May, for instance, penalties were announced against Cuba’s Interior Ministry, its National Police and its Directorate of Intelligence.

Those were followed this month by sanctions targeting Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, as well as members of his family.

The sanctions are designed to penalise those “responsible for repression” in Cuba, an island whose communist government has been accused of stifling dissent, as well as imprisoning and torturing activists.

Turk on Monday acknowledged Cuba’s human rights record and called on the country to “release all those arbitrarily detained”.

But he also pointed to the mounting death toll associated with the US sanctions, which have isolated the island country from much of the world.

The sanctions freeze any US-based assets the target may have, but they also prohibit entities from conducting business with the sanctioned parties. That can result in difficulties accessing global financial systems and other international platforms.

The de facto oil blockade has also resulted in the increasing frequency of power outages, and essential services like public transportation and medical care have faced reductions. Turk pointed to those downstream effects in his remarks.

“Cuba faces increasing isolation,” he said. “Companies are leaving. Fewer airlines fly to the country. It is almost disconnected from international payment systems.”

Turk’s office has also highlighted the human costs of the sanctions. According to the statistics it cited, infant death rates have doubled, reaching 9.9 for every 1,000 births. The survival rate for childhood cancer, meanwhile, has declined from 85 to 65 percent.

In March, the Cuban government also warned of medical needs going unanswered as a result of the energy shortage. It estimated that there was a backlog of 96,387 people awaiting surgery, 11,193 of whom were minors.

It also underscored that 16,000 patients needed radiotherapy, and another 2,888 required dialysis, two treatments that depend on steady electrical supplies.

Turk’s remarks also pointed to the risks posed by the Atlantic hurricane season and other natural disasters. Within hours of his remarks, western Cuba was rattled by a powerful 6.1-magnitude earthquake. Summer heat alone could cost lives, he explained.

“Rising summer temperatures risk increasing the spread of vector borne and waterborne diseases,” Turk said.

“The hurricane season further increases exposure. This creates a perfect storm for social and economic deterioration and suffering for the Cuban people.”

Trump has repeatedly suggested that he is considering military action in Cuba to remove its leadership after the US-Israel war on Iran reaches an end.

Since January, only one Russian oil tanker has been allowed to reach the island, leaving its foreign fuel supplies largely depleted.

Of the complaints made to the Citizens Advice Consumer Service, 42% involved all-inclusive packages abroad

More than four million people had problems with a package holiday in the past year, a survey for Citizens Advice suggests. The survey found 76% of adults had been on a package holiday before, and 34% of them had experienced a problem. Some 8% had suffered an issue within the last 12 months specifically, equating to an estimated four million travellers, it said.

The charity said it received about 14 complaints a day about package holidays, including issues such as unexpected changes to the hotel, denied refunds, and poor customer service. Of the 3,500 package holiday complaints made to the Citizens Advice Consumer Service in the past year, 42% involved all-inclusive packages abroad.

A third of complaints (33%) related to the quality of the holiday falling short of the agreed deal, such as hotels being misdescribed, bad food or unavailable facilities. Customer service failures made up 19% of complaints, including long waits on the phone, ignored complaints and administration errors made by firms.

As a result, one in four of those who experienced an issue with a package holiday (25%) said they suffered stress, anxiety or upset, while 17% had to pay extra for daily expenses. Citizens Advice encouraged holidaymakers to check what protections were included within their booking.

One complainant, Zorana, a semi-retired NHS doctor from north-east England, reported spending £6,300 on an all-inclusive, seven-night trip to Lanzarote with her daughter through a UK holiday operator. Torrential rain on the second day resulted in “nightmare” flooding, leaving hotel guests without electricity, water, food or internet.

However the woman said she received no on-site support from their operator, causing them considerable stress. Zorana, 66, said: “We spent the morning on the beach and planned the sauna for later. But when we were eating lunch the rain started and didn’t stop.

“By the time we got to the spa, the hotel told us we couldn’t go in because it was flooded. Half an hour later the electricity had gone. Without electricity, everything stopped. There was no more internet and no more water because the pumps were not working.

“We all gathered in the hotel lobby, to hear what was going on. It was the weekend and reps from all the other travel companies were there, talking with people, reassuring them, giving them information. Some were already distributed to other places. We asked, ‘Where is our rep?’ And we were told he doesn’t work on weekends.

“We were very angry. Hotel staff told us our travel company was always a problem and never helped people. We came home after five days and I started to chase the travel company for a refund. But the customer service adviser said they can’t deal with it because compensation was offered. But their offer was not adequate.

“I mentioned the lack of support, the delay, the value of the holiday, that I had to find and pay for another hotel, and because of this it was reasonable that they should give me all my money back. I feel a victim twice over because I had the stress of our holiday being ruined, and then months of trying to get compensation.”

Citizens Advice consumer spokeswoman Jane Parsons said: “Too often, people are left stressed and disappointed when their dream holidays are spoiled because they’re not getting what they paid for. To make matters worse, they’re having to spend a lot of time and effort trying to resolve issues, sometimes with no luck.

“A record of any issues that occur and evidence should be kept – like clear details of what went wrong and when, photos and receipts. If something goes wrong with your holiday you might be able to get compensation from the company you booked with. You should tell them about any issues as soon as possible – if you don’t say anything until you get home you might get less compensation, or none at all.”

Chartered Trading Standards Institute chief executive John Herriman said: “This research highlights the real impact poor practice in the travel sector can have on consumers, specifically the problems for consumers booking holidays online, particularly through social media.

Left out of pocket

“Too many people are left out of pocket or dealing with stress when holidays don’t meet what was promised. What should be a time to relax and unwind can turn into the opposite. While it’s vital consumers understand their rights, check the protections included and keep clear records if something goes wrong, businesses must meet their legal obligations and ensure they deliver the standard of service people have paid for – and resolve issues raised quickly.

“Strong consumer protection depends on both informed consumers and responsible traders.”

Consumers are entitled to compensation for a holiday if it was lower in value than the one booked, spending extra money was required because of a problem, a large part of the booked services were not provided, something goes wrong that causes distress or disappointment or if the holiday was completely ruined.

Yonder surveyed 2,018 adults between April 17-19 about their experiences with package holidays, including problems. Respondents were asked to exclude issues outside the operator’s control, like geopolitical events or natural disasters.