A federal judge ruled on Friday that officials at Florida’s state-run immigration jail, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, must give attorneys better access to their detained clients.
The order by federal judge Sheri Polster Chappell, from the middle district of Florida, said facility officials must provide access to confidential, private, free and unmonitored outgoing legal telephone calls from people detained in the facility. Polster Chappell also ruled that attorneys are allowed to make unannounced visits to see their clients, bypassing the facility’s pre-scheduling requirement.
The state of Florida opened the detention center in summer 2025 to detain undocumented immigrants caught within the state. Since its opening, the facility has faced severe criticisms of the treatment of detainees.
Amnesty International, the human rights group, published a report in December detailing conditions inside, finding that “people arbitrarily detained in ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ are being held in inhuman and unsanitary conditions, including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposure to insects without protective measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water, and lack of privacy”.
James Tolkan, known for his roles as an authoritarian figure in the Back to the Future and Top Gun films, has died. He was 94.
A Palestinian middle school student in Michigan who was publicly admonished for refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance as part of a personal protest against the war on Gaza has settled with her school district following a lawsuit around her first amendment free speech rights.
As the calendar soon turns to April, it appears that we can finally shed all talk of the polar vortex until next winter as milder weather takes hold across much of the eastern U.S. and a cool-down ends the western heat wave.
"No Kings" protesters gathered from coast to coast, holding signs, chanting and donning elaborate costumes on Saturday, capping off the third such coordinated demonstration against President Donald Trump's actions and policies amid his second term. More than 3,000 events were expected throughout the nation.
The number of American service members wounded in the Iran war has grown beyond 300, with more than two dozen troops injured this week from attacks on a Saudi air base.
Twelve hours after Israeli settlers brutally attacked several Palestinians and established a new illegal outpost in their village, the Israeli military stepped in.
A bill "aimed at combating renewed forms of antisemitism", which is due to be debated on by parliament next month, has sparked a heated controversy in France in recent weeks.
A group of anti-war, US military veterans have slammed what they say are Israeli interests guiding US military policy, culminating in the current US-Israeli war on Iran that is putting American lives at risk. 
