The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) denied a permit for the Pebble Mine in Alaska on Wednesday, a proposed open-pit copper and gold mine that would sit at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. The announcement marks the likely conclusion of a decades-long battle between Alaskan Native [...]
A Wednesday report by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines-Cluster Munition Coalition (ICBL-CMC) has found that global cluster munition casualties increased by 92 percent in 2019 when compared to annual casualties in 2018. The increase has been primarily linked to the use of cluster munitions in the war in Syria, with 219 casualties occurring in [...]
A class action lawsuit on behalf of New York City’s houseless families was filed against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration on Tuesday for their failure to provide stable internet to city shelters. This suit comes within days of the city’s announcement that any in-person education would be suspended amidst a spike in COVID-19 cases. Local [...]
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday invalidated the state legislature election victory of Democrat Jimmie Wilson over a previous federal misdemeanor conviction. The invalidation deemed Republican David Tollett the default victor of the November 3 Arkansas State House District 12 election. The court invalidated Wilson’s victory despite then-president Bill Clinton pardoning Wilson for in 2001. [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled Tuesday that an adoptive, nonbiological child is not a “legitimated” child under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments, the court created a per se rule that nonbiological children cannot be “legitimated” under the INA and rejected the plaintiff’s claim of gender [...]
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) called Tuesday for the appointment of a special prosecutor and new grand jury to examine the police killing of Breonna Taylor. LDF reviewed audio files from the jury proceedings and found that Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s team “presented evidence in a biased manner that protected the [...]
The British Foreign Office released its twice-annual report on Hong Kong Monday, in which Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab suggested removing British judges from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. This is the most recent step in the deterioration of Sino-British relations over the status of Hong Kong since the 1997 handover of the former [...]
The New Zealand Law Commission recommended a new legal framework for police use of DNA in criminal investigations in a new 572-page report released Monday. The Commission, an independent Crown entity, reviewed and reported on the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995 following a government request in July 2016. Its review found that the Act [...]
Pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy charges related to the company’s marketing of OxyContin and other opioid products, admitting its tactics contributed to the nation’s opioid epidemic. On October 21 Purdue announced it had entered into an agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to resolve multi-year investigations into its marketing [...]
The Administrative Court of Stockholm on Monday rejected Google’s appeal against the decision of the Swedish data protection authority (Authority) and confirmed that Google has violated the provisions of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The Authority had imposed a fine of 75 million Swedish kronor (approximately 7 million euros) on Google in March [...]
