Category Archives: Freedom

Our country boasts we are a free nation, and we have a military that is willing to defend our freedom. But what is this freedom we are willing to die for?

Today much of our culture defines freedom as Freedom From, a rejection of any constraints on our choices and a belief that no one should tell others what to think or how to behave; a belief that there are no moral absolutes everyone must conform to.

This is known as secular or negative freedom. Religion is an enemy of freedom because it recognizes a moral standard. With no shared values there is no consensus in society, law can become arbitrary. Involvement in community wanes as individuals wish to live independently, as they desire.

This freedom becomes an excuse for selfishness, where compassion is replaced by self-interest. Lack of involvement and commitment erodes democracy, and eventually leads to an immense bureaucratic government where citizens end up with very little freedom. When virtue is inadequate, government needs to constrain individuals behaviors.

Negative freedom is selfish-centered happiness; but individuals find no lasting happiness as their lives become unanchored to any deeper purpose. This can lead to addictive behaviors as they participate in distractions from a life that lacks deeper meaning; these behaviors can manifest as slavery to sinful lifestyle choices.

Our nation was founded on Positive Freedom, defined as Freedom For; a freedom that citizens use to accomplish positive things. This freedom is not the absence of constraints but instead the limitations on freedom, choosing the right constraints. It is virtue and unselfish behavior that makes freedom possible.

True Freedom is a personal responsibility, and a submission to an accepted moral code. Unless you can honor the constraints required for human relationships you will never experience the freedom of societal peace. We cannot survive committed only to ourselves; we are inherently dependent upon each other. We need morals and constraints if we expect to be able to live with others. Free and willingly virtuous people have little need for an oppressive government that controls peoples behaviors, robbing people of freedom.

Happiness comes from relationships with others. There is no greater freedom than to love and be loved, and not having to face the world by ourselves. This freedom is commitment to mutual sacrifice, and not exploitation of others for self-centered reasons.

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What kind of freedom? | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshalltown Times Republican

The case of a woman convicted over 20 years ago for the death of her former-fiances son could be reexamined through a conviction integrity unit proposed by Democratic Attorney General candidate Greta Kemp Martin.

Tasha Shelby has been serving a life sentence without parole at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility since her 2000 capital murder conviction for the death of her stepson, Bryan Thompson IV.

Shelbys attorney, family members and supporters believe she is innocent because of the toddlers family history of seizures and evolving science behind Shaken Baby Syndrome.

They see a conviction integrity unit as one of the last options they could use to free Shelby.

Weve been fighting for Tasha for 26 years, said Shelbys aunt Penny Warner at a Tuesday press conference with Kemp Martin.

Last week a panel of the state Supreme Court denied her request for a new trial. That leaves Shelby with few options such as asking the attorney general to dismiss her charge or requesting a pardon from the governors office, which the supporters have done.

Kemp Martin, who met and talked with Shelby last week, said her proposed conviction integrity unit could help her and others across the state. She said the unit would look at cases of innocence, wrongful conviction, prosecutorial misconduct and evidence.

Her fate is sealed unless someone steps in to intervene, Kemp Martin said.

Warner planned to visit Shelby after the press conference and tell her about the recent development in her case. The Tennessee native is the relative who lives closest to Shelby, and Warner said she makes the drive down to the Jackson area every few months.

Warner sees Shelby as one of her daughters and shes waiting for the call that says she can come home. Her niece would live with her, and Warner has already prepared an outfit for her niece to wear when she gets out of prison.

I cannot do what she has done, Warner said about her niece being incarcerated for over 20 years. She has remained so positive. She has a very strong faith and we all pray for her all the time. I kept thinking shed be home by now.

On the early morning of May 30, 1997, 22-year-old Shelby heard a thump and found 2-year-old Bryan on the floor struggling to breath and having what appeared to be a seizure. She called the toddlers father who was at work and they rushed the toddler to the hospital.

Prosecutors believed Shelby was responsible for the toddlers brain injuries. An expert witness for the state who conducted the autopsy testified Bryans injuries showed someone intentionally shook him and banged his head against something injuries consistent with shaken baby syndrome.

Yet in a similar later case in Alabama where state expert Dr. Scott Benton was a paid expert for the defense, he offered conflicting testimony.

West Virginia Innocence Project Director Valena Beety took on Shelbys case in 2011 while working at the Mississippi Innocence Project. In interviews and court filings, Beety has argued that Shelby is innocent, and experts have cited advances in medical science that have undermined shaken baby syndrome now referred to as abusive head trauma.

LeRoy Riddick, the medical examiner who ruled Bryans death a homicide, reexamined medical records and concluded a family history of seizures may have contributed to the toddlers death and produce injuries that are consistent with shaken baby syndrome, so he changed the manner of death from homicide to an accident, Mississippi Today reported in its investigation Shaky Science, Fractured Families.

From Riddicks updated opinion and evolving science about shaken baby syndrome, Shelby asked for a new trial. The state called child abuse pediatrician Benton to testify at Shelbys 2018 Post-Conviction Relief hearing. He maintained that Bryan died from blunt force trauma with shaking.

The next year, a Harrison County Circuit Court judge upheld Shelbys conviction, saying that shaken baby syndrome hasnt been debunked.

Shelby tried the federal court by filing a habeas petition with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi in 2021, but earlier this year that petition was dismissed because it was time-barred.

Beety, Shelbys attorney, filed another petition for post-conviction relief in March based on contradictory testimony by Benton, which was first reported in Mississippi Todays Shaky Science, Fractured Families series.

She argued in the court records that the testimony Benton gave as an expert in 2022 for a man accused of child abuse in Alabama would have supported relief for Shelby at her 2018 post-conviction relief hearing.

The motion for post-conviction relief also cited new evidence: one of the jurors in Shelbys case was the toddlers great-uncle by marriage and had heard about the childs death before trial, according to court records.

A panel of the state Supreme Court dismissed Shelbys request for a new trial but allowed the George Cochran Innocence Project at Ole Miss to file an amicus brief to support her. Beety, Shelbys attorney, said the order did not make sense, so she has filed a motion for clarification this week.

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Woman has few hopes for freedom in shaken bay death conviction - Mississippi Today

Today the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) publishes the latest edition of the consortiums monitoring report, compiling and analysing all media freedom violations recorded on Mapping Media Freedom between January and June 2023 in all EU Member States and candidate countries.

In the six month period, the MFRR partners recorded 575 media freedom violations in European Union Member States and candidate countries, involving 844 individuals or media outlets. 307 of those took place in EU Member States, while 268 occurred in candidate countries.

In the EU the most common type of attacks were verbal attacks (35.8%) such as insults and discrediting of journalists, to which this report dedicates one of its thematic chapters. Legal attacks were the second most prominent category (24.8%), followed by physical attacks (21.2%), attacks on property (16.9%), and censorship (14.3%).

The current monitoring report offers an overview of the media freedom situation across the EU and candidate countries in the first half of 2023 and it starts with a thematic chapter on the crackdown on independent media in Turkey amidst devastating earthquakes and national elections that took place at the beginning of the year, followed by a chapter on the war in Ukraine and its repercussions on media freedom.

The report also covers the rise in attacks on journalists and media workers by police officers and security forces and, as mentioned earlier, the rise in the discrediting of journalists and reputational attacks against them to hinder their work.

The report is divided into the following chapters: an overview offering data and graphics about the press freedom situation in the EU and in candidate countries in 2023, four thematic sections with quantitative and qualitative analysis regarding the aforementioned topics, and country reports offering a summary of the most relevant threats in the following EU countries: Italy, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, and France; and in the following candidate countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia.

You can download the report in full using the button below.

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MFRR Monitoring Report 575 media freedom violations in the first ... - European Centre for Press and Media Freedom

MIDLAND, Mich. Michigans Freedom of Information Act is fundamentally broken and must be reformed. A new policy brief from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy reviews the current law and offers improvements to ensure the government becomes more accountable to the public.

The states Freedom of Information Act exists to help citizens hold their government accountable by granting the public access to records, documents, correspondence and other information created or used by public entities. This helps to inform the public about how their government is run and how their tax dollars are spent.

Unfortunately, government entities have consistently abused FOIA by charging excessive fees, inappropriately delaying requests and using broad redactions to conceal information. The law also contains loopholes that make it increasingly difficult for citizens to obtain public records. In many cases, the requester has no choice but to file a lawsuit to try to get information.

The brief addresses these problems and many more by providing an extensive rewrite of the law. The goal of these recommendations is to ensure citizens have greater access to public information by placing the burden on the public body rather on than the requester.

Proposed solutions in the brief include:

Lawmakers seeking to reform FOIA can use this brief as a guide to change Michigan from one of the least transparent states to one of the most.

It is well past time for bold and meaningful reforms to Michigans transparency laws, said Steve Delie, director of transparency and open government at the Mackinac Center. Governor Whitmer and both past and present legislatures have consistently failed to enact even minor reforms. This inaction has enabled the government to misapply state law and thwart the publics access to information. These revisions are a roadmap for policymakers who want to enact transformational change.

The Mackinac Center submits thousands of public records requests each year. We represent individuals who face challenges when seeking public records and also sue on our own behalf.

Read the policy brief here. Learn more about the Centers work on improving government transparency here.

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Michigan's Freedom of Information Act Must Be Significantly Reformed - Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Lea YpisFree: Coming of Age at the End of Historyhas met with a hostile reception in her home country of Albania, and it is easy to see why. Her self-description as a Marxist Albanian professor of political theory at the London School of Economics says it all.

Reading Ypis book, I was struck by the parallel between her life and that of Viktor Kravchenko, the Soviet official who defected while visiting New York in 1944. His famous bestselling memoir,I Chose Freedom,became the first substantial eyewitness account of the horrors of Stalinism, beginning with its detailed description of the Holodomor (famine) in Ukraine in the early 1930s. Still a true believer at the time, Kravchenko had participated in enforcing collectivisation, and therefore knew of what he spoke.

As he spent more time in the West, Kravchenko grew increasingly aware of its own injustices and became obsessed with reforming Western democratic societies from within.

Kravchenkos publicly known story ends in 1949, when he triumphantly won a big libel suit against a French Communist newspaper. At the trial in Paris, the Soviets flew in his ex-wife to testify to his corruption, alcoholism and domestic abuse. The court was not swayed, but people tend to forget what happened next. Immediately following the trial, when he was being hailed around the world as a Cold War hero, Kravchenko grew deeply worried about the anti-Communist witch hunts unfolding in the United States. To fight Stalinism with McCarthyism, he warned, was to stoop to the Stalinists level.

As he spent more time in the West, Kravchenko grew increasingly aware of its own injustices and became obsessed with reforming Western democratic societies from within. After writing a lesser-known sequel toI Chose Freedom, entitledI Chose Justice, he embarked on a crusade to discover a new, less exploitative mode of economic production. That quest led him to Bolivia, where he invested in an unsuccessful effort to organise poor farmers into new collectives.

Crushed by that failure, he withdrew into private life and ultimately shot himself at his home in New York. And no, his suicide was not due to some nefarious KGB blackmail operation. It was an expression of despair, and further proof that his original denunciation of the Soviet Union had always been a genuine protest against injustice.

YpisFreedoes in one volume what Kravchenko did in two. When Albania descended into civil war in 1997, her whole world fell apart. Reduced to hiding in her apartment and writing a diary while Kalashnikov shots clattered outside, she made an extraordinary decision: She would study philosophy.

But what is even more extraordinary is that her engagement with philosophy brought her back to Marxism. Her story attests to the fact that the most penetrating critics of Communism have often been ex-Communists, for whom the critique of actually existing socialism was simply the only way to remain faithful to their political commitments.

Freegrew out of an earlier treatise on how socialist and liberal notions of freedom are interrelated, and it is this perspective that structures the book. The first part, on how Albanians chose freedom, provides an eminently readable memoir of Ypis childhood in the last decade of communist rule in Albania. While it includes all the horrors of daily life food shortages, political denunciations, control and suspicion, torture and harsh punishments it is also punctuated by comical moments. Even under such harsh and desolate conditions, people found ways to preserve a modicum of dignity and honesty.

In the second part, which describes Albanias post-communist turmoil after 1990, Ypi recounts how the freedom chosen by or, rather, imposed on Albanians failed to deliver justice. It culminates in a chapter about the 1997 civil war, at which point the narrative breaks off and is replaced by snippets from Ypis diary. The strength of Ypis writing is that, even here, she is tackling the big questions, exploring how ambitious ideological projects usually end not in triumph but in confusion and disorientation.

In the 1990s, one such project was replaced by another. With communism toppled, ordinary Albanians were subjected to democratic transition and structural reforms designed to make them more like Europe with its free market. Ypis bitter conclusion in the last paragraph of the book is worth quoting in full:

My world is as far from freedom as the one my parents tried to escape. Both fall short of that ideal. But their failures took distinctive forms, and without being able to understand them, we will remain forever divided. I wrote my story to explain, to reconcile, and to continue the struggle.

Here we have an ironic rebuttal to Marxs11th Thesis on Feuerbach, which famously observes that Philosophers have hitherto onlyinterpretedthe world in various ways; the point is tochangeit. The counterpoint is that one cannot change the world for the better unless one first understands it. This is where the great initiators of both the Communist and liberal projects fell short.

If we believe that things will fall into place by just letting them take their course, we will end up with multiple catastrophes, from ecological breakdown and the rise of authoritarianism to social chaos and disintegration.

The conclusion Ypi draws from this insight, however, is not the cynical stance that meaningful change is either impossible or inevitable. Rather, it is that the struggle (for freedom) goes on, and always will. Ypi thus feels that she owes a debt to all the people of the past who sacrificed everything because they were not apathetic, they were not cynical, they did not believe that things fall into place if you just let them take their course.

Therein resides our global predicament. If we believe that things will fall into place by just letting them take their course, we will end up with multiple catastrophes, from ecological breakdown and the rise of authoritarianism to social chaos and disintegration. Ypi channels what philosopher Giorgio Agambencalled the courage of hopelessness, his recognition that passive optimism is a recipe for complacency, and thus a hurdle to meaningful thought and action.

At the end of Communism, there was a widespread, euphoric hope that freedom and democracy would bring a better life; eventually, though, many lost that hope. That is the point where the real work begins. In the end, Ypi does not offer any easy way out, and therein lies the strength of her book. Such abstinence is what makes it philosophical. The point is not to change the world blindly; it is, first and foremost, to see and understand it.

Project Syndicate

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Freedom without justice - IPS Journal

Pioneering life sciences journal eLife finds itself at the center of a white-hot furor after its governing board fired editor-in-chief Michael Eisen following his endorsement on social media of a satirical article expressing sympathy for Palestinians caught in the escalating violence in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The decision, which was called for by some corners of the scientific community, and ignited a subsequent backlash in others, highlights disagreements among researchers about institutions restrictions on free speech when science and politics collide.

At least seven editors at eLife and advisers to the journal have resigned in protest of his dismissal, including Elisabeth Bik, the celebrated spotter of scientific data manipulation. Other researchers have pledged to boycott the publication until its leaders provide a transparent explanation for Eisens removal and demonstrate a commitment to academic freedom of expression. Many declined to speak to STAT due to how heated the discourse has become in recent days.

On Monday, Eisen, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley who is Jewish, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he was being replaced for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.

In a statement posted to its website and emailed to eLife editors Tuesday, the journal confirmed the firing by the board, which is made up of representatives of eLifes founding funders the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society in Germany, and the London-based Wellcome Trust. But it suggested that the tweet in question was not the sole reason for Eisens ouster.

Mike has been given clear feedback from the board that his approach to leadership, communication and social media has at key times been detrimental to the cohesion of the community we are trying to build and hence to eLifes mission, the statement said. It is against this background that a further incidence of this behaviour has contributed to the boards decision.

Eisen did not respond to STATs requests for comment.

A longtime critic of traditional publishing and outspoken advocate for open science, he has a history of being unafraid to take on powerful institutions in the name of bettering the research enterprise. While many scientists describe him as amiable in person, his online persona has a more caustic edge, especially on X, where he has amassed more than 73,000 followers and posted nearly as many tweets. More than a few of those have sparked controversy in the past, including 2016s #landergate and 2020s wormageddon.

The turmoil this time began on October 13 when Eisen, with his trademark playful yet provocative ire, applauded a story posted by the news parody website The Onion, headlined Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas. Eisen wrote on X: The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.

But unlike in the past, most people did not take Eisens comments which were aimed at vague university statements regarding the conflict in stride. Instead, his post ignited a fusillade of criticism that his statements were offensive and lacked empathy for Israeli civilians killed and taken hostage by Hamas.

Is this a joke to you? tweetedMeital Oren-Suissa, a senior scientist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Your comment and this article are very hurtful.

Absolutely disgusted by these heartless & callous remark, tweeted Derya Unutmaz, a cell biologist at the Jackson Laboratory. This isnt just insensitivity, its a cruel mockery of one of the worst tragedies, which deepens the pain of those who lost loved ones. Its also shocking such a malevolent comment is from a scientist and @eLife editor

Alleging an anti-Israel bias that would compromise the integrity of the journal, some Israeli researchers called for Eisen to resign and urged colleagues to withhold manuscript submissions until the demand was met. Others called on HHMI to cut funding to Eisens lab, which has received support through its individual investigator program since 2008.

The outpouring of antagonism and Eisens subsequent dismissal have troubled many researchers who feel that the ability to freely express ones opinions in the public square, whether thats on a university campus or on social media, is foundational to the scientific enterprise.

No scientist should be fired over something like this because it really affects the freedom of speech within the scientific community, especially for early career and minority researchers, said Lara Urban, a biodiversity researcher at Helmholtz Munich who held several eLife positions before stepping down this week. People need to be able to voice controversial opinions.

For the past three years, Urban has been a member of eLifes early career advisory group, which met weekly with the journals leadership team to discuss how the journal could use its growing prestige to further its goals of transforming the traditional publishing system to increase access, equity, and inclusivity.

Bik told STAT she resigned from the eLife Ethics Committee because as a scientific journal that considers ethics and equity as core values, it shouldnt get involved in personal opinions, in particular those on geopolitical situations, provided those opinions are not denigrating or hurtful. Bik understands why some have interpreted Eisens comments as hurtful, but she saw them as emphasizing the loss of civilian lives on both sides of this conflict. Pointing attention to civilian death in a war situation should not result in someone losing their position at a scientific journal, she said.

Legal experts who have followed the case said the journal was within its rights in firing Eisen, because eLife is a private nonprofit organization. Its a simple fact of employment law in the United States that people in the private sector have essentially no protection from their employers if the employers dont like their opinions, said Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago.

But the role of academic journal editor is rarely a full-time job. Like Eisen, most people take on those positions in addition to their university work running research labs and teaching classes which come with constitutionally and contractually protected rights to academic freedom of expression. The eLife case highlights fears over how that freedom can get whittled away if other parts of the research ecosystem, like funders and publishers, dont support the same values.

Its always been the case that we have no guarantee that the people reviewing our grants, or reviewing our papers, or reviewing us for promotion arent influenced by other things they know about us, Leiter said. All social media does is to make it easier to advertise what your views are.

eLife was launched in 2012 with a commitment to open access and a collaborative system of peer review that attracted hundreds of top scientists, making it quickly rise to the ranks of big-name publications like Science, Nature, and Cell. In 2019, when eLife hired Eisen, it was seen widely as a doubling down on its mission of ensuring that everyone has access to the infrastructure needed to openly disseminate, review, and curate the scientific literature.

Eisen championed bold moves for the journal that were often divisive. In 2020, the journal announced a new policy requiring that all authors who wanted to publish in eLife first post their submissions online as preprints. In 2022, it introduced an even bigger change the decision to publish every paper it sent out for peer review, alongside reviewers assessments of the works significance and rigor a change that was effectively relinquishing the traditional journal role of gatekeeper, Eisen said in a press release at the time.

That particular experiment proved too much for a number of eLife editors, who worried about its impact on the prestige of the platform and threatened to resign if the policy was implemented. When Eisen pushed forward anyway, a few followed through, though not the mass resignation that was feared.

But for Urban, who became an editor at eLife a few months ago, it was precisely these kinds of policies that attracted her to the journal. Mikes eLife is the eLife I joined, she said. He elevated the early career advisory group and gave researchers like her a voice within the organization. When she and others in the group saw people organizing online against him, they reached out individually to eLife leadership with their concerns that censuring Eisen would set a dangerous precedent. When those concerns werent addressed, they submitted a formal letter to the board on October 19, to be considered at its meeting that day.

According to Urban, they never received a response. She learned of Eisens ouster on Twitter Monday. After seeing the journals statement Tuesday, she reluctantly resigned her positions at eLife.

The statement implies that because of tweets in the past he wasnt able to unite people behind him, Urban said. It was an explanation she found unsatisfactory, and out of alignment with eLifes mission. Its easy to unite people when youre playing to majority, entrenched interests, she said.

If you make those people mad, maybe thats a good thing for the future we imagine a scientific community that is more diverse and more equitable than it is now.

It was a difficult decision, she emphasized, because eLife is such a promising organization striving to change structural shortcomings of the scientific publishing system. Now she worries that the innovative policies Eisen pushed may disappear along with his name from the masthead.

At the same Oct. 19 meeting, the eLife board met with Eisen to discuss his tweets, and later that day it asked him to resign or face termination, Eisen told Science. The board doesnt want eLife embroiled in controversies and they look at me, I guess, as someone who makes things controversial, he said.

At the time of publication, eLife had not responded to STATs requests for an interview or emailed questions.

At least online, Eisen seems to be embracing this latest kerfuffle as the price to pay for speaking his mind, perhaps even a badge of honor. Mama always said Id be the first person to be cancelled, he tweeted late Tuesday night.

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Free speech concerns arise in wake of journal editor Eisen's firing - STAT

Author Salman Rushdie called Sunday for the unconditional defense of freedom of expression as he received a prestigious German prize that recognizes his literary work and his resolve in the face of constant danger.

The British-American author decried the current age as a time when freedom of expression is under attack by all sides, including from authoritarian and populist voices, according to the German news agency dpa.

He made his remarks during a ceremony in St. Pauls Church in Frankfurt, where he was honored with the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for continuing to write despite enduring decades of threats and violence.

In August 2022, Rushdie wasstabbed repeatedlywhile on stage at a literary festival in New York state.

Rushdiehas a memoir coming out about theattackthat left him blind in his right eye and with a damaged left hand. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder will be released on April 16. He called it a way to answer violence with art.

The German prize, which is endowed with 25,000 euros ($26,500), has been awarded since 1950. TheGerman jurysaid earlier this year that it would honor Rushdie for his resolve, his positive attitude to life and for the fact that he enriches the world with his pleasure in narrating.

Irans Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had condemned passages referring to the Prophet Muhammad in Rushdies 1988 novel The Satanic Verses as blasphemous. Khomeini issued a decree the following year calling for Rushdies death, forcing the author into hiding, although he had been traveling freely for years before last summers stabbing.

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Salman Rushdie calls for defense of freedom of expression as he ... - Spectrum News 1

Governor Murphy Sounds the Alarm on Incoming GOP Assault on Reproductive Freedom in New Jersey

Senate Minority Leader Buccos Comments Spark Outrage Across the State

TRENTON, NJ Following anexplosive editorial by NJ.comin which Senate Republican Minority Leader Anthony Bucco (R-25) confirmed that Republicans planned to launch a coordinated attack on reproductive rights if they win a majority in the State Legislature,Governor Phil Murphy is sounding the alarmon this imminent threat to abortion rights in New Jersey:

Senator Bucco has now confirmed that if Republicans gain control of the State Senate, State funding for womens health care and Planned Parenthood is on the chopping block,said Governor Murphy.Its never been more clear that abortion access is on the ballot. We cannot afford to go backwards, and thats why Democrats must come out and vote in this election to protect our freedom from extreme Republican attacks.

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Governor Murphy Sounds the Alarm on Incoming GOP Assault on ... - InsiderNJ

By: Max Gillespie 7:00 am on October 24, 2023

The Soloviev Group has announced the inclusion of 513 affordable housing units within the proposed Freedom Plaza in Manhattan, significantly contributing to the citys inclusionary housing efforts. Located from 38th to 41st Streets east of First Avenue and covering over six acres in Midtown East, the ambitious mixed-use development was already slated to feature 4.77 acres of green space, a museum, shopping and restaurants, and a hotel. Now with the inclusion of the affordable units, it also stands to be one of Manhattans largest inclusionary housing initiatives in more than a decade.

Michael Hershman, CEO of Soloviev Group, underscored the firms commitment to alleviating the housing crisis by incorporating more than 500 affordable units, aligning with the citys Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program. The affordable housing component is planned to ensure at least 30 percent of the total 1,325 residential apartments are permanently affordable, available to those earning 80 percent or below the average median income.

A notable partner in this venture, Mohegan, will spearhead the entertainment and hospitality elements of Freedom Plaza. The revenue generated by the projects entertainment and hospitality component will allow Freedom Plaza to deliver the affordable housing program and expansive publicly accessible green space, with many more details yet to be announced, said Ray Pineault, CEO and president of Mohegan.

Following this announcement, Mohegan also introduced the Mohegan Momentum Partnership Program for New York City, aimed at boosting local economic activity.

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Soloviev Group Announces Affordable Housing Units in Freedom ... - New York YIMBY

The European Court of Human Rights, ECHR found in a judgment published on Tuesday that four citizens of North Macedonia of Roma origin were discriminated against in 2014 when border authorities prevented them from leaving their own country.

The first incident had happened on November 29, 2014 at Skopje airport when the first plaintiff, named as Ms. Memedova, was prevented from departing to Germany, where she said she was going to visit her son.

The second plaintiff, named as Ms. Kurtishova, was prevented from flying from the same airport on June 19 the same year. The other three plaintiffs, a married couple named as Abazov and Abazova and their driver, named as Memedovski, were rebuffed at the Tabanovce border crossing with Serbia on March 4, 2014.

The ECHR found that the first four plaintiffs had been discriminated against and that their rights to freedom of movement and freedom to choose ones own residence within a states territory, as well as freedom to leave any country, including ones own, had been violated.

It also found that North Macedonia violated the European Convention on Human Rights provision prohibiting discrimination on any ground such as sex, race, colour, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, association with a national minority, property, birth or other status.

The court however found that the case brought by the fifth plaintiff, the driver of the married couple, was inadmissible.

The judgment, which was reached on October 3 has been already appealed by the government of North Macedonia.

Strasbourg ordered the country to pay for plaintiffs costs and expenses plus compensation of 3,000 euros and 4,100 euros to the first and second plaintiffs respectively, for suffering non-pecuniary damage such as distress and frustration, stemming from the actions of the state authorities.

An additional joint sum of 5,900 euros is to be paid to the third and fourth applicants, the married couple.

The easing of the visa regime for travelling into the Schengen Zone for most of the Western Balkan countries in 2009 resulted in a surge of asylum requests by people from the region to the more developed European countries.

Many people coming from impoverished regions in the Balkans used the novelty to travel and ask for asylum in countries with long asylum procedures like Germany, Belgium and Sweden. Even if eventually turned down and ordered to return, during their prolonged stay they would receive state benefits far surpassing what they would earn or receive in welfare payments in their home countries.

The situation caused these countries to increase the pressure on the Balkan states to do more to prevent these people from reaching their borders, and also to introduce or consider introducing protective mechanisms to suspend visa-free travel.

North Macedonia started boosted checks on departing passengers at its borders in 2011 after a memo from the Interior Ministry that ordered the strengthening of the controls during exit from the territory of Republic of Macedonia of organised groups, potential asylum seekers, citing article 15 of the Border Control Law as a legal basis.

But human rights groups and later the State Ombudsmans office, as well as the Constitutional Court, determined that this article contained no basis for border services to prevent their own citizens from exiting the country, except if they were found to be a threat to national security, public policies, international relations or public health.

In June 2014, the then Interior Ministry spokesperson, Marija Jakovlevska, told BIRN that during 2012 and 2013, the border authorities prevented the exit of 15,590 citizens.

Subsequent unofficial data and research by human rights groups in the country has suggested that the countrys impoverished and marginalised Roma population was the most common target for border turnbacks.

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North Macedonia Curbed Roma Citizens' Freedom of Movement ... - Balkan Insight