The New Zealand Parliament on Wednesday approved the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill , which forbids non-resident foreigners from buying existing homes. The legislation was a key campaign pledge made by the New Zealand Labor Party during last year’s elections . Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made foreign housing buying a political issue last campaign and claimed that housing speculation [...]

The plaintiffs in the Hawaii v. Trump travel ban challenge voluntarily dismissed their action in federal district court Monday. The third version of the controversial travel ban was upheld  at the end of the last Supreme Court term. The travel ban was deemed to be within the scope of the executive’s powers in the 5-4 [...]

The European Commission sent a “reasoned opinion” to the Polish government Tuesday over the new law lowering the mandatory retirement age of the Polish Supreme Court from 70 to 65. The lowering of the mandatory retirement age is largely seen as a way to pack the Polish judiciary by the Law and Justice Party. The European [...]

Four former high-ranking Guatemalan military officers were found guilty Wednesday of crimes against humanity by the Guatemalan High-Risk Court C. The officers were found guilty of sexually abusing an activist and the disappearance of her 14-year-old brother. They were sentenced to 58 years in jail. The family of the activist has been searching for their [...]

The Ontario Court of Appeal , the highest court in the province of Ontario, ruled Wednesday that US-based oil corporation Chevron Corp.’s Canadian subsidiary cannot be held liable for a USD $9.5-billion award granted by an Ecuadorian court against the parent company. This lawsuit arose out of the original actions against Texaco (which later became [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging Ohio’s US congressional map as unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. The ACLU is challenging the Ohio federal congressional map on the basis of violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and Article I of the US Constitution. In the complaint, the ACLU points out that [...]

A judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump cannot block people from viewing his Twitter feed over their political views. The court held that the @realDonaldTrump twitter handle possesses components that are “interactive space” where Twitter users may directly engage with the content [...]

Ongoing violence in Libya is having a devastating impact on health care, according to a Tuesday report from the UN Human Rights Office and UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) studying the effects from May 1, 2017, to May 1, 2018. The report highlights the effects of crossfire between armed groups on hospitals and other [...]

Eight senior members of Thailand’s former ruling political party (Pheu Thai) were charged Monday with sedition. The charges stem out of three members describing the “failings” of the military government. In addition, five other individuals were charged with participating in banned political activities. Tuesday marks the four-year anniversary of the coup that led to the [...]

The Malaysian government on Monday announced the creation of a special task force to look into whether there were criminal acts committed by the management of the 1 Malaysian Development Berhad (1MDB) . The task force is asked to identify and seize assets that were acquired from the illegal siphoning from the state fund. Former [...]