The Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Thursday that bankrupt oil and gas companies in Alberta must use funds to reclaim oil and gas well sites before paying debtors. The case, Orphan Well Association v. Grant Thornton Ltd, involved oil and gas company Redwater that went bankrupt in 2015. The trustee in the bankruptcy attempted [...]

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced on Tuesday that Baltimore will no longer be prosecuting marijuana possession, regardless of weight or criminal history. The decision to end prosecution was based on a “lack of a demonstrable public safety benefit, the resource drain that resolving marijuana possession cases places on prosecutors, and the racially unjust manner [...]

Sea-Watch e.V. filed a complaint against Italy with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Monday because Italy refuses to allow the ship Sea-Watch 3 to dock at its ports. The ship currently is holding 47 migrants that were rescued from a shipwreck off the Libyan coast earlier this month. The Mayor of Syracuse in [...]

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) stated in a filing Wednesday that full compliance with a wildfire prevention court order would cost between $75 billion and $150 billion. The US District Court for the Northern District of California proposed on January 9 to require PG&E to re-inspect all of its electrical grid and remove or trim any trees [...]

Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that several articles of the Iraq National Oil Company Law were unconstitutional. The law is meant to establish the Iraq National Oil Company as a public company owned by the state for oil and gas production and development. The unconstitutional articles related to the objectives of the company and the [...]

US President Donald Trump signed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act into law Monday, intended to encourage innovation in advanced nuclear power plant designs. The act requires several changes to the licensing process for nuclear reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will have 270 days to develop and implement a staged licensing process for [...]

The Office of Inspector General for the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) released a report on Thursday which found that the number of children separated from their parents or guardians by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are thousands higher than previously reported by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). A June [...]

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University reported on Monday that 42,726 scheduled immigration court hearings had been canceled throughout the US as of January 11 due to the government shutdown. The largest number of cases comes from California, with 9,424 cases canceled. New York has canceled 5,320 cases, and Texas has canceled [...]

The Mannheim District Court in Germany dismissed a patent lawsuit from Qualcomm against Apple on Tuesday. Qualcomm filed the suit against Apple due to the use of Qualcomm chips in Apple’s smartphones. The court determined that Qualcomm’s lawsuit against Apple was groundless. The lawsuit was determined based on the language of the patent which the court determined [...]

The Constitutional Court of Guatemala on Wednesday blocked the removal of the UN’s International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). The CICIG is responsible for investigating corruption in Guatemala. The agreement to establish the CICIG was first ratified in August 2007. The fifth extension of the agreement extended the presence of the CICIG until September 3, [...]