An Australian jury found a police officer not guilty Friday of all charges related to the death of a young indigenous man in the remote community of Yuendumu, in the Northern Territory of Australia. Constable Zachary Rolfe shot and killed 19-year-old Walpiri man Kumanjayi Walker during an attempted arrest on the night of November 9, [...]
The Australian state of South Australia Thursday became the first jurisdiction in the country to formally ban the use of spit hoods on detainees. A spit hood is a mesh-fabric face covering that is fixed to an individual’s neck. The device is used in prisons, immigration detention centers and mental health facilities. The legislation, known [...]
Australia’s Federal Court rejected the first part of a challenge to the Australian government’s India travel ban on Monday. The ban on travel to and from India was introduced last week by Health Minister Greg Hunt in response to the developing COVID-19 crisis in the country. Any individual found guilty under the determination faces up [...]
The government of the Australian state of Victoria announced Tuesday that it would become the first state in the country to establish a formal truth-telling commission to record the effects of colonization and dispossession on Aboriginal people. The Yoo-rrook Justice Commission, named after the word for “truth” in the Wemba Wemba/Wamba Wamba language of north-western Victoria, aims [...]
Facebook on Wednesday barred Australians from seeing or sharing news content on Facebook. The move came in response to the Australian government’s proposed media bargaining law that would force Facebook and Google to pay to use content from Australian media companies. Facebook described its decision to “restrict the availability of news on Facebook in Australia,” [...]
An independent review of Australia’s environmental legislation, released Thursday, found a need for “fundamental reforms,” citing “a decline of iconic places.” The long-awaited government-commissioned review by Professor Graeme Samuel AC makes 38 recommendations for reform. In particular, it focuses on the centerpiece of Australia’s environmental legislative framework, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. [...]
The Conservation Council of Western Australia (CCWA) Monday launched a legal challenge against the Western Australia State Government’s approval of the new Burrup Hub petroleum gas development. The environmental group is challenging Woodside Petroleum’s expansion because it was not given proper environmental assessment prior to approval. In a press release, the group describes the development [...]
An Australian parliamentary committee investigating Rio Tinto’s blasting of a highly significant ancient rock shelter in the state of Western Australia released a scathing interim report Wednesday, describing “a ‘don’t care culture’ that infected Rio Tinto from the top down” and a “completely inadequate” legislative framework for Indigenous heritage protection. Juurkan Gorge, in Western Australias [...]
Australia’s parliament on Thursday approved a law giving the federal government powers to void foreign agreements entered into by state governments, local councils and universities. The law establishes a public register of foreign agreements and empowers the foreign minister to review them and determine whether they are “inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy objectives.” The Australian [...]
A Venezuelan court Thursday convicted six American oil executives of wide-ranging corruption offenses. The six US nationals include the former president and former vice-presidents of Citgo refining company, a US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil corporation Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). The offenses include criminal association, money laundering and willful embezzlement. Five of them were [...]
