The Madras High Court ordered Friday the Tamil Nadu government to develop an exigency plan to guarantee that the midday meal scheme at schools is not suspended in the case of future emergencies, such as the Covid-19 outbreak. The direction came in a writ petition underlining the need to begin door-to-door delivery of cooked nutritious [...]

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) fined Facebook £50.5 million on Wednesday for violating an initial enforcement order issued by the CMA during its investigation into Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy. In May 2020, Facebook acquired Giphy for $400 million. Subsequently, the CMA issued an initial enforcement order in July 2020 prohibiting any further integration [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Tuesday that the Cuban government “systematically engaged in arbitrary detention, ill-treatment of detainees, and abuse-ridden criminal prosecutions in response to peaceful anti-government protests in July 2021.” In July 2021, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in anti-government protests, motivated by dissatisfaction with the Cuban government’s handling of the economy, [...]

Over 100 countries adopted the Kunming Declaration on Wednesday at the first part of the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The declaration aims to reverse the present loss of biodiversity around the world and to implement a path recovery by 2030. The declaration highlighted the [...]

The government of India on Tuesday brought in new rules increasing the gestational limit for abortion from 20 weeks to 24 weeks for certain categories of women. The rules come under Section 6 of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 (MTP Act). The Parliament had amended the MTP Act in March 2021 and increased the [...]

The Supreme Court of India ruled Friday that if the fundamental right to education under “Article 21A of the Constitution has to become a reality,” then the needs of underprivileged children “to receive adequate access to online education cannot be denied.” The court passed the order while issuing notice in a special leave petition against [...]

The UN Human Rights Council approved a resolution Thursday to appoint, for one year, a Special Rapporteur to monitor the status of human rights in Afghanistan as it evolves. The Council adopted the resolution introduced by the European Union with 28 votes in favor, 14 abstentions, and five votes against, including China, Pakistan, and Russia. [...]

The Supreme Court of India ruled Thursday that the National Green Tribunal (NGT) can take suo moto actions, or act without a formal request, based on letters, representations and media reports. The court delivered the landmark decision in an appeal filed by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai against an NGT order on waste disposal [...]

The Government of Karnataka announced the Karnataka Police (Amendment) Act, 2021 on Tuesday, prohibiting all forms of online games involving betting, wagering and gambling of any kind in the state. The amendment follows the Karnataka High Court’s order to the state government to consider a petition that sought to ban all types of online gambling [...]

The Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly Wednesday passed a resolution urging the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to adopt an additional protocol to the European Convention of Human Rights establishing an enforceable “right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.” The Social Affairs Committee of the Assembly presented the draft proposal in September [...]