Kevin Bollaert, who was charged after allegedly posting pornographic photos of women and girls submitted by ex-boyfriends as revenge, then asking complaining women and girls for money in order to remove the photos, will go to trial on 31 felony counts.

After Bollaert’s five-day preliminary hearing, the judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to proceed with the trial. Bollaert is reported to have posted over 10,000 revenge porn images on his websites, including YouGotPosted.com.

Bollaert also created a second site called changemyreputation.com for revenge-porn victims.

Bollaert is charged with conspiracy, identity theft and extortion. There had also been allegations of child pornography, since at least two victims had said that they were underage.

Bollaert denies the charges. The charges carry a maximum penalty of 22 year in prison.

Bollaert was also charged in three other states in the past, but he did not respond to the lawsuits, and the judge entered default judgements.

There exists in California a law the criminalizes revenge porn. Only a few states have such laws, but there is increasing activism to create them.

Read more: Revenge-Porn New Laws for 2014

If Bollaert is found guilty in the case, it may be the first major revenge-porn prosecution. There are significant obstacles to prosecution, however.

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Answering a global outcry for urgently desired action against caste-based rape and violence against women, the UN Human Rights Council held a side-event Tuesday dedicated to the issue.

Many human rights organizations, policy makers and India’s UN representative had asked rights groups to address the problem after it received attention following the gang-rape and hanging of two girls in India May 27.

The event, “Caste-based Violence against Women: The role of the UN in combating caste-based violence and discrimination,” was co-sponsored by Human Rights Watch, the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR), Minority Rights Group, Franciscan International, and the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, Norway, Denmark, and the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and urged member UN members to speak up about the problem, which is thought to be increasing.

Asha Kowtal, leader of a delegation of Dalit women to the Human Rights Council, stated, “Caste-based rape and violence against Dalit women and girls is escalating as we fight to claim justice.”

“Words and legislation is not enough,” said UN Women policy director, Saraswathi Menon. “We need concrete action. Legislation alone does not address structural discrimination. The UN has an important role to play and must step up to the plate to help stop caste-based violence against women.”

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said, “I urge governments to fully implement all the recommendations made by international human rights mechanisms, as well as those arising from national processes. Our outrage is not enough. We must take real and focused action to mend our societies’ dramatic failure to support the rights of people of discriminated castes, particularly women and girls.”

Caste-based violence and discrimination affect women in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen and other cultures that value caste.

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California, which has the largest sex offender registry in the United States, has received the news from the California Sex Offender Management Board that their registry is not working. The board reported that the fast-growing registry included too many unnecessary people and that it did not help law enforcement or the public differentiate potentially risky offenders from those who would likely not reoffend.

The board reported that about 95 percent of solved sex crimes are committed by people who are not on the registry, and said that the registry was created, in part, on assumptions that have since been proved to be wrong. The board called for an overhaul of the registry.

The board recommended to the California legislature that only high-risk offenders, such as violent predators and kidnappers–that is, offenders whose offenses are also characterized by something other than sex–should be required to register for life.

The list currently has 100,000 offenders registered, and is growing. California requires lifetime registration of all sex offenders. The nature or circumstances of the offense are not usually relevant to registration.

When the board reported earlier this year, they had found that the registry included many offenders “who do not necessarily pose a risk to the community.” Nine hundred such registered offenders last offended more than 55 years ago.

The registry is also used for Megan’s Law, a tool of law enforcement used to notify the public about sex offenders. It offers the public a searchable website of what are considered the most serious registered sex offenders. However, around 80 percent of all of California’s 100,000 registered offenders are posted on the Megan’s Law website.

In 2011, the California Sex Offender registry was audited. The audit found that the government department responsible for the state’s prison and parole system, the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, had been illegally abusing the sex offender registry by forwarding all offenders for examination as possible sexually violent predators rather than using discretion. That is, anyone convicted of any sexual offense was forwarded to be considered for classification as a violent offender and so registered. The law did not permit this.

Not only that, since 2005, the audit found that although 59 percent of released sex offenders violated parole, only 1 percent committed a new offense. That one percent represented 134 convicts. Of those 134, only one committed a new sex offense.

California State Auditor

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The DC Appeals Court sided with Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg Friday in a case over several pages on Facebook, such as “Third Palestinian Intifada,” which called for Muslims to rise up and kill Jews. The ruling was based on the protections given to all Americans using the internet under a section of a 1996 law.

Three years ago, Klayman saw the Facebook page “Third Palestinian Intifada,” of which there were 360,000 members, as well as three similar, smaller pages, and complained to Facebook because the pages called for Muslims to rise up and kill Jews. After receiving a letter from Israel’s Minister for Public Diplomacy as well as from Klayman, Facebook removed the pages, but not fast enough, according to Klayman, who filed suit against Facebook and Zuckerberg. Klayman alleged that the delay of “many days” constituted intentional assulat and negligence.

Mark Zuckerberg

The district court which heard the suit found for Facebook and Zuckerberg on the basis of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) (1996), Section 230. Klayman appealed the decision, and Friday the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit upheld the decision of the district court.

“In enacting the Communications Decency Act,” wrote the court in its decision, “Congress found that the Internet and related computer services ‘represent an extraordinary advance in the availability of educational and informational resources,’ and ‘offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse, unique opportunities for cultural development, and myriad avenues for

intellectual activity.”

The court concluded that Facebook and Zuckerberg–internet providers under Section 230–could not be held responsible for any content on their site(s), no matter how egregious it may seem to another user. “Facebook is not responsible for the actions, content, information, or data of third parties,” the court found.

“Congress accordingly made it the ‘policy of the United States’ to ‘promote the continued development of the Internet,’” the court continued, “and ‘to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation[.]‘”

The Communications Decency Act (CDA) was passed in 1996. It was in part an effort by the US Congress to regulate internet pornography, but in 1997 the US Supreme Court unanimously struck the “community standards” provision of the CDA in Reno v. ACLU because the provisions violated the First Amendment guarantee to freedom of speech.

Another part of the CDA, however, has been strengthened by court decisions over the years. Section 230 protects operators of internet services–such as Facebook–from being construed as publishers. Section 230 protects social media sites, ISPs and users by making them not liable for words posted on their sites by other people (except  regarding federal criminal liability and intellectual property). The section reads, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Providers are even protected if they fail to take action after receiving notifications that harmful or offensive content exists on their sites.

Section 230 is considered a main protection of free speech online. Last year, after 47 state attorneys general signed a letter to Congress requesting the civil immunity in Section 230 be removed, the ACLU wrote, “Section 230 is directly responsible for the free, messy, uncensored, and often brilliant culture of online speech. By prohibiting most state civil or criminal liability for something somebody else writes or posts, it created the single most important legal protection that exists for websites, bloggers, and other internet users… If Section 230 is stripped of its protections, it wouldn’t take long for the vibrant culture of free speech to disappear from the web.”

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In the war-ravaged though officially at peace Democratic Republic of Congo, 12 percent of the population has been raped. Nearly 50 women and girls are raped every hour.

“It’s true that we raped here. We found women because they can’t escape. You see her, you catch her, you take her away and you have your way with her,” one Congolese soldier told a reporter after a leave was ordered to “go and rape.” “Sometimes you kill her. When you finish raping then you kill her child. When we rape, we feel free.”

Soldiers of Congolese bands are frequently given leave by their commanders to “go and rape women.”

“How do you see someone who is hitting you in the eyes? How will you know someone who is inserting a gun barrel in your mouth?” one Congolese woman described the event of being raped by three soldiers. The woman had been raped before the incident with the soldiers, however, by a schoolteacher. The militia raped her two daughters as well, and afterward killed her husband.

Shamed, she was ostracized from her family and sought shelter with an aid organization. She has been raped three times since then.

1,152 women are raped every day–48 per hour–in the DRC, according to the American Journal of Public Health.

“Every day, they take the women and rape . You see a three-year-old child who has been raped. Why would they do that?” said film-maker Fiona Lloyd-Davies, whose documentary “Seeds of Hope” premiered at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict Tuesday.

“[T]here is very little about sex there, it’s mostly about an experience of horror and power,” commented Rob Williams, the chief executive of War Child UK, a charity working to reduce rape in the Congo, on the issue.

Lloyd Davis said of Congolese rape victims, “I do think that women and girls expect to be raped, there is a sort of tired acceptance. More so in rural areas, where you need to walk far to get water, tend to your crops, or go to the forest and dig for cassava. The perpetrators could be militiamen from different groups, but it could also be soldiers from the Congolese army. It has become part of society, which is terrifying for women and girls.

The soldiers who commit these crimes are not always, but often, young men kidnapped and forced into the militia life from a young age. “They’re numb, they have been skewed, they have a different sense of what is normal. But this doesn’t mean they’re not aware of what they’re doing,” said Lloyd-Davies. Some soldiers express remorse, such as a man in “Seeds of Hope” who also said he would not admit his crimes unless his superiors were prosecuted. “They are the ones who sent us,” he said. “If those who committed these crimes can be arrested and judged, then that would be good.”

“Up until now, there have been very few trials, and the trials that we have seen have not been very effective,” Lloyd-Davies commented recently on the question of justice and accountability in the Congolese conflict.

She cited Bosko Ntaganda, an indicted war criminal, who had been sought by the International Criminal Court since 2006 for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In 2011 Ntaganda was in charge of 50,000 Congolese army troops and was working for the government.

Not only lack of accountability for perpetrators of rape, but shame of victims of rape also contributes to its perpetuation.

“There is a huge stigma attached to it,” said Lloyd-Davies. “Husbands and families often reject them. If they become pregnant, young women have told me that their family makes them choose between coming back to them and keeping the baby. Mostly the women seem to choose to stay with the baby, even though they often have difficult relationships with them, especially if they are boys.”

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Russia took over the chairmanship of the UN Security Council (UNSC) June 1, and Ugandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Sam Kutesa took over the Presidency of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) June 11. One of these nations is currently at the top of world headlines for aggression in Ukraine, and both have recently made headlines for passing strict anti-gay legislation–in contravention of and threatening the guarantees of the UN Charter of Rights and Freedoms, according to top UN representatives.

When Russia passed anti-gay laws before the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, the UN took several measures to condemn the laws. “The United Nations stands strongly behind our own ‘free and equal’ campaign,” said UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in condemning Russia’s legislation. “Hatred of any kind must have no place in the 21st century.”

“As I have been repeatedly and consistently stating in the spirit and framework of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Ki-Moon continued, “that everybody is born free and equal and everybody has a right to be equal, regardless of age, and sex, and sexual orientation, and gender identity. This is a fundamental principle of human rights.”

When Uganda signed into law its strict Anti-Homosexuality Act in February–for which some Ugandan legislators were proposing the death penalty, although the proposal was dropped in favor of life in prison–the UN spoke out against the legislation, saying it violates basic human rights and endangers homosexuals and others.

“This law will institutionalize discrimination and is likely to encourage harassment and violence against individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation,” stated UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay. “It is formulated so broadly that it may lead to abuse of power and accusations against anyone, not just LGBT people.”

Pillay and Ki-Moon voiced deep human rights concerns. “This law violates a host of fundamental human rights,” continued Pillay, “including the right to freedom from discrimination, to privacy, freedom of association, peaceful assembly, opinion and expression and equality before the law – all of which are enshrined in Uganda’s own Constitution and in the international treaties it has ratified.”

The June agenda for the UNSC will include a meeting in Afghanistan and meetings on African issues–particularly on Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, the Sahara-Sahel, Sudan and South Sudan.

The Middle East is also on the agenda for the UNSC, particularly Yemen, Libya and Syria. Other matters upcoming include armed drones and new peacekeeping missions where force may be mandated.

No talks on Ukraine have been scheduled. Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said, however, that Russia was “ready for any surprises here,” noting that every UNSC member can call a meeting on any situation which poses an internatioal threat to peace and security.

Russia is one of the five permanent members of the UNSC, along with the US, China, Great Britain and France. There are 10 non-permanent members.

The UNSC makes decisions for the UN regarding peace and international security, and all UN members are supposed to heed UNSC decisions, in accordance with the UN Charter.

Russia will hand over the chairmanship of the UNSC to Rwanda on July 1.

Uganda to Lead United Nations General Assembly

The UNGA is composed of 193 member nations. The UNGA is the organ of the UN wherein all members have equal representation. The UNGA oversees the UN budget, receives UN reports and makes recommendations, and appoints non-permanent members to the UNSC.

The Presidency of the UNGA is a rotating one-year position, and is a largely ceremonial post.

The election of Ugandan Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa to the Presidency has drawn some criticism. Kutesa has a history of corruption and has been censured for corruption by the Ugandan Parliament. The government to which Kutesa belongs is also a cause for the criticism. The Ugandan government, headed for 28 years by Yoweri Museveni, has been accused and found guilty of international war crimes by international courts.

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WarkaWater towers harvest water from air–up to 25 gallons each, daily–and are set to be installed in the Ethiopian desert hills by 2015. The towers, named after the disappearing Ethiopian Warka tree, were designed by Arturo Vittori of Architecture and Vision.

The 30-foot (9 m) tall, 88-pound vase-shaped towers have two main parts. The semi-rigid exoskeleton is a weave of of lightweight juncas or bamboo stalks. The internal plastic mesh, similar to the bags oranges are sold in, hangs inside the tower, collecting condensation on a nylon and polypropylene scaffold.

The towers cost $550 and can be built in a week by a four-person team with local materials. Although designed with parametric computing–the parabolic modelling technique used in WarkaWater design was learned by Vittori while working on aircraft interiors and solar powered cars–Vittori said, “Once locals have the necessary know how, they will be able to teach others villages and communities to build the WarkaWater towers.”

The towers can collect 25 gallons of water daily, and work best in the radically changing temperature fluctuations between the desert’s days and nights.

The familiar water solution of digging wells is not viable in the rocky hills and plateaus of Ethiopia, where deep drilling–as well as the pumps and pump power necessary–is expensive.

Forty billion hours are spent collecting water by sub-Saharan Africans annually, according to UN estimates. This water is not always safe to drink.

Water shortage is a global problem, affecting an estimated 1 billion people in Africa alone. Approximately 3.4 million people die annually from water-related diseases–1,400 children under age five daily.

Vittori hopes to have two WarkaWater towers working in Ethiopia–where only 21 percent of the population has access to proper sanitation–by 2015. Vittoli hopes the time freed up that would have been used for collecting water will liberate Ethiopians from the cycle of dependence and poverty. It is proposed that WarkaWater towers could provide hydration for the 1 billion people who do not have access to safe drinking water. Vittori is seeking funding to mass-produce and distribute the towers. Increased production would also bring down the $550 dollar price tag.

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Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa is set to become President of the UN’s General Assembly on June 11. The election of Kutesa has caused some criticism because the Ugandan government–for which Kutesa forms foreign policy–has been under the 28-year rule of President Yoweri Museveni, and has been accused and found guilty by international courts of international and humanitarian crimes.

Kutesa himself has been accused by the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of crimes. Kutesa was indicted for corruption several times, and was censured by the Ugandan Parliament in 1999 for corruption–in the form of diverting millions of dollars away from Ugandan Airlines into a private company.

The government for which Kutesa serves has been accused and found guilty of war crimes. The Ugandan government has been accused of wars of aggression against neighbor countries, ethnic cleansing and plunder of resources. These international and humanitarian crimes were committed by the Ugandan government against the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for example, accoding to a ruling by the International Court of Justice. The World Court ruling, which was handed down in 2005. In 2006, the International Criminal Court also also launched a criminal investigation of the Ugandan government’s actions in the DRC. Uganda has been accused of similar crimes in Rwanda and South Sudan. The leadership of the government–and the man Kutesa answers to– is President Yoweri Museveni.

Museveni took office in 1986, when he restricted the activities of other political parties. Political parties were allowed by Museveni to exist, but were not allowed to campaign in elections or field candidates directly. The ban on political pluralism was ended by a constitutional referendum in 2005. Museveni won the vote in 2006, but the Ugandan Supreme Court ruled that the election was marred by intimidation, voter disenfranchisement, violence and other irregularities, but voted 4-3 in favor of upholding the results of the election. Museveni was again elected in 2011 with 68 percent of a 59 percent turnout. The 2011 election was called “illegitimate” by the opposition parties and the EU election observer team said the vote was “marred by avoidable and logistical failures, which led to an unacceptable number of Ugandan citizens being disenfranchised.” After the 2011 election, opposition leader Kizza Besigye was arrested on charges of attacking authorities, although the event was reported as Besigy’s car being attacked during “Walk to Work” protests, in which several people died and hundreds were wounded, prompting the UN to urge the Ugandan authorities to sop using “excessive force” against peaceful protesters. The next election is set for 2016.

Recently–in 2013–Human Rights Watch accused the Ugandan government of oppressing press freedom, saying, “Between January and June, a media watchdog organization registered 50 attacks on journalists, despite multiple pledges to respect media freedom.” During this time, two large publications were shut down and seized by the government in response to a leaked letter that mentioned a plot to assassinate opposition leaders of Museveni, as well as Museveni’s plans to hand over power to his son upon retirement.

The anti-homosexuality law was signed by Museveni earlier this year, claiming homosexuality was “disgusting” and was a learned trait. Attacks against LGBT have increased 10 times since the law was signed, as reported by the Guardian.

The punishments for homosexuality in Uganda include maximum sentences of life imprisonment for homosexuals and seven years for assisting homosexuals remain undetected.

The election of Kutesa has been objected to by at least two US Senators–Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand– who cited Uganda’s homosexuality laws, and Ugandan newspaper publisher Milton Allimadi–who lives in New York City–filed a petition to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who weeks ago publicly denounced Uganda’a Anti-Homosexuality Act, and UN members, saying that “Mr. Kutesa could become the President of the UN General Assembly in a few weeks unless the international community stops this travesty. This would be a mockery of all the ideals that the UN is supposed to stand for.” Allimadi called on Kerry to deny a visa to Kutesa, citing similar actions taken against Iran’s UN representative designate Hamid Aboutalebi. Allimadi also said that the election “would seriously undermine the United Nations and expose it to more ridicule and humiliation.”

The post of UNGA President is a rotating one-year position, and this year Africa is to provide the official. The UNGA President presides over the General Assembly and other meetings.

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