Category Archives: RT

Thousands of protesters calling for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló have brought Puerto Rico almost to a standstill. Public outrage was prompted by his texts mocking victims of the devastating 2017 hurricane, Maria.

Protesters were joined by a number of high-profile Puerto Rican celebrities, including Latin pop singer Ricky Martin and rapper René Pérez Joglar, also known by his stage name ‘Residente.’ Many businesses, including the Plaza Las Américas mall in San Juan, closed throughout the day in anticipation of the demonstration.

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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has introduced a bill that would protect the right to boycott Israel, apparently related to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. We look at why the legislation is bound to be dead on arrival.

Omar (D-Minnesota) formally submitted the resolution to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Though the bill’s text does not explicitly mention BDS, it unmistakably endorses the movement that seeks to launch an international pressure campaign to incentivize Israel to withdraw from occupied territories and negotiate a peace settlement with the Palestinian leadership

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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has defiantly refused to cooperate with a UN human rights tribunal, saying that if he is ever to be put on trial over his ‘War on Drugs’, it would have to be in the Philippines.

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution last Thursday to investigate alleged human rights abuses by Duterte’s government as part of Manila’s ‘War on Drugs.’ The measure was introduced to the 48-member international body by Iceland, prompting Duterte to consider severing ties with the Nordic nation.

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Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) has long been dismissed by the US and Israel as a fringe “hate movement”, but now, a similar set of tactics has been endorsed by a United Nations’ (UN) expert on human rights.

Al Jazeera reported on Thursday that Michael Lynk, who serves as the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said that the European Union (EU) and other world powers should consider isolating Israel on the world stage until it stops building new settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

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A bust of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun sold at Christie’s auction house in London for $6 million, angering the Egyptian authorities, who say the statue is cultural treasure looted by tomb raiders.

Egyptian officials claim that the bust was stolen several decades ago, and had called on the auction to be called off. Christie’s responded that there was nothing improper about the sale and that it had been on display for years before without complaint.

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Rep. Justin Amash left Republican Party and became a hero for Donald Trump’s opponents and possible presidential candidate. But his urge for re-examination of the two-party system may seem too much for US politics to stomach.

Amash argues that heightened levels of partisanship have distorted the country’s founding fathers’ vision of liberty and limited government. As a result, Congress has turned into little more than a rubber stamp for the executive branch of government, he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Thursday.

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Venezuelan intelligence says it has foiled an assassination attempt against President Nicolas Maduro, which envisioned a group of rogue officers storming the presidential palace and installing an imprisoned general in his stead.

The plot by current and former military officers involved breaking retired General Raúl Isaías Baduel out from a maximum security prison in Fuerte Tiuna, where he is kept since 2017 for wanting to overthrow the government, and seizing state-run Venezolana de Televisió where he would be pronounced president. Intelligence agencies said they had been unraveling the plot for 14 months.

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