The Hong Kong government released the new national security bill on Friday and sent it to the Legislative Council (LegCo) for deliberation. The bill consists of nine parts, including criminalizing several national security offenses not covered in the 2020 National Security Law but listed in Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law. The bill [...]

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Italy detained a German non-governmental rescue vessel Humanity 1 for 20 days, after the Libyan Coast Guard intervened in the rescue operation with armed forces. SOS Humanity, the German search and rescue organisation, contended that the Italian authorities detained the ship based on false accusations and demanded the ship be released immediately. The captain of [...]

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The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal unanimously ruled Tuesday that seven activists’ “systemic proportionality challenge” to the constitutionality of Section 17A(3) of the Public Order Ordinance is not reasonably arguable. While the court refused to grant leave to the activists on their systemic proportionality challenge, the court accepted their “operational proportionality challenge” and scheduled [...]

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The Hong Kong government “strongly condemned” self-exiled activist Ted Hui Chi-fung in a statement on Monday for intimidating government officials and obstructing the course of justice by appealing to the public to carry out doxxing against public officers who handled his case. In the statement, the government condemned Hui for disseminating a list of public [...]

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The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5-4 on Friday that Canada’s Constitution protects Canadians’ internet protocol (IP) addresses from unreasonable search. The police are required to obtain prior judicial authorization before obtaining an IP address for criminal investigations, provided by Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Writing for the majority, Justice [...]

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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 [...]

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The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA) refused to grant leave to the government on Friday to appeal the acquittals of seven pro-democracy activists. The lower court overturned the activists’ convictions for organizing an unauthorized assembly but upheld their convictions for participating in an unauthorized assembly. The lower court reasoned that leading and directing [...]

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The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) declined a request made by the Supreme Court of Estonia to give an advisory opinion in relation to the prohibition of double jeopardy on Monday. The ECHR held that the question submitted by Estonia is the subject of well-established case law. Therefore, the ECHR concluded that it is [...]

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Canada’s Federal Court declared Tuesday that the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice violated their duties to appoint judges to vacancies in superior courts. Federal Court Justice Henry Brown further wrote that the failure to fill judicial vacancies denies Canadians access to justice without delay, a constitutionally enshrined right. The applicant Yavar Hameed, as a [...]

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