Since October 7, 2023, when Israel officially declared war on Hamas, at least 137 journalists have died in Gaza, the West Bank, Israel, and Lebanon. Among these casualties, 129 were Palestinian, two were Israeli, and six were Lebanese.[1] Additionally, 49 journalists were reported injured, two are missing, and 74 have been arrested. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), this is one of the deadliest periods for journalists since 1992[2], and in the first ten weeks of the war, more journalists were killed than in any country over an entire year.[3] Many onlookers claim Israel has a pattern of killing journalists and accusing them of being fighters, and such repression has made it difficult to know what is happening in Gaza.

On December 4, 2024, the General Assembly adopted, without a vote, the resolution “Crimes Against Humanity,”[1] to launch the process of codifying into an international binding agreement the International Law Commission’s 2019 draft articles on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. This text reflects two resumed sessions in 2023 and 2024 and formal and informal discussions during the seventy-ninth session.

The Council of Europe’s (CoE) European Committee on Crime Problems (CDPC) held its 86^th plenary session on November 20-22, 2024.^[1]

On November 20, 2024, a federal jury convicted two Honduran men for participating in a scheme to smuggle Honduran nationals into the United States illegally.[1]

On November 18, 2024, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the unsealing of an indictment, charging the former CEO of 500.com (now BIT Mining Ltd.), Zhengming Pan, a Chinese national, with Foreign Corrupt Practices Act crimes.[1]

On November 21, 2024, the Brazilian Ministry of Justice announced that U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton in the District of Columbia has ruled that a giant emerald exported from Bahia, Brazil, to the U.S. was taken from Brazil illegally and must be returned.[1]

On November 20, 2024, the U.S. District Court in Brook unsealed a five-count criminal indictment [1] charging Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani, and Vneet S. Jaain, executives of an Indian renewable-energy company (the Indian Energy Company), with conspiracies to commit securities and wire fraud and substantive securities fraud for participating in a multi-billion-dollar scheme to raise

                A Second Circuit en banc panel recently decided that naturalized citizens must be notified if their guilty plea could put their citizenship at risk.  In doing so, the court ruled in favor of Abdulrahman Farhane, a 70-year-old man from Morocco who immigrated to the US after winning a visa lottery. Charged with conspiracy to launder money and lying to federal agents in 2006, Farhane pleaded guilty after his counsel advised him that it was his best option.  However, his counsel did not disclose that, by pleading guilty, Farhane gave the government the power to revoke his citizenship. “Today we hold that the Sixth Amendment entitles a naturalized U.S. citizen facing the risk of deportation following denaturalization to no less protection than a noncitizen facing the risk of deportation,” wrote Judge Susan L. Carney.[1]

On November 21, 2024, the Pre-Trial Chamber I (PTC) fast-forwarded the proceedings in the Situation in the State of Palestine before the International Criminal Court (ICC). First, the three-judge panel unanimously rejected Israel’s challenge, submitted on September 26, 2024, based on Article 18(1) of the Rome Statute. Second, the same PTC rejected a second challenge, submitted by Israel on September 28, 2024, based on Article 19 of the Statute (lack of jurisdiction). After having “cleared the decks,” finally, on the same day, the PTC issued three arrest warrants against the residing Prime Minister of Israel - Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Minister of Defense of Israel - Yoav Gallant, and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades).

On November 14, 2024, Frank Butselaar pled guilty to one count of aiding or assisting in the filing of a false or fraudulent tax return.  The guilty plea occurred after seven days of trial testimony showing a sophisticated scheme to shelter income offshore on behalf of ultra-high-net-worth individuals.[1]