Search Results for: Environment

The UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders issued a position paper Wednesday urging European nations to stop the state repression of environmental protest and to live up to their obligations under the Paris Agreement to cut global warming. In the paper, Michel Forst stated that the “repression that environmental activists who use peaceful civil disobedience [...]

The New Zealand Parliament started on Tuesday the first reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill. The amendment seeks to repeal the previous government’s initiatives in controlling tobacco sales. The previous government set the Smokefree 2025 goal, to reduce smoking rates for all population groups to less than 5 percent. The government [...]

The court of last resort for Britain’s overseas colonies and some Commonwealth countries revived a lawsuit seeking to block the construction of an airstrip in Antigua and Barbuda over environmental concerns on Tuesday. The UK-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) concluded that the plaintiffs in the suit have standing to challenge the airstrip’s [...]

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) urged the authorities in the Équateur region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday to continue dialogue with the media to address press freedom violations and ensure journalists can work without fear of reprisals. The dialogue commenced on February 17, 2024, when Équateur Governor Bobo Boloko Bolumbu invited journalists [...]

The US Supreme Court denied a petition to hear an appeal Tuesday concerning the exclusion of potential jurors based on the jurors’ religious beliefs in a Missouri sex discrimination case. Jean Finney, a worker for Missouri’s Department of Corrections who is also lesbian, sued her employer alleging sexual discrimination and retaliation after Finney began dating [...]

The US Supreme Court left in place an admissions policy at an elite public high school in Virginia on Tuesday after the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the admissions practice. The plaintiffs in the case argued that the school’s policy discriminates against Asian Americans. Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the majority [...]

Members of the Brockton School Committee urged the city’s mayor on Friday to ask Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey for National Guard support. Student violence and a high rate of teacher absences instigated the request. Four committee members—Joyce Asack, Tony Rodrigues, Claudio Gomes, and Ana Oliver—specifically requested that temporary National Guard support be deployed at Brockton [...]

The US House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance held a hearing Wednesday with US Marshals Service Director Ronald Davis to discuss the agency’s response to threats against federal judges one day after Davis revealed to Reuters that threats against federal judges have skyrocketed across the country in the last year [...]

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Tuesday upheld the legality of Belgium’s Flemish and Walloon decrees which requires that all animals slaughtered for human consumption must be killed only after using proper stunning procedures to limit animal suffering and promote humane slaughtering practices. The law was previously upheld by the European Court of Justice, [...]

Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor on Friday began an investigation into the alleged spread of “LGBT propaganda” by the language learning application Duolingo, as reported by state-run news organization TASS. Specifically, Duolingo is suspected of running afoul of Article 5 of Russia’s law “On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development,” [...]