Poland announced its decision Saturday to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, spurring an uproar among EU leaders, human rights organizations and activists worldwide. Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro stated in a press conference that his ministry would begin withdrawing from the treaty as early as Monday. Ziobro and other government officials [...]

The Mexico City Congress has approved a bill reforming the city’s penal code to criminalize conversion therapy. The reform seeks to penalize practitioners of conversion therapy, and the relevant provision in the Code specifies “the criminalization of contracts, treatments, therapies or services, tasks or activities that pretend to correct the sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression [...]

Former Philippines Supreme Court Justices Antonio Carpio and Conchita Carpio-Morales have joined the faculty of the University of the Philippines College of Law (UP Law) in petitioning the Supreme Court to void the country’s recently passed anti-terrorism law. The law, which took effect on July 18 after being signed by President Rodrigo Duterte July 3, [...]

The Malaysian government announced Friday that Goldman Sachs has agreed to a total settlement of USD $3.9 billion in the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) corruption scandal. In return, the government will dissolve all the criminal charges and proceedings against the firm. The agreement includes a $2.5 billion cash payout by the investment bank and a [...]

The Indian Government has issued a formal Government Sanction Letter to grant Permanent Commission (PC) to women officers in the Indian Army. The letter, written by the Ministry of Defense on Thursday, permits the grant of commissions to women across the entire Indian Army. A permanent commission allows the officers to work until they retire. [...]

A Russian court has sentenced Yuri Dmitriev, a Gulag historian, to prison for allegedly sexually abusing his adopted daughter.  The judge sentenced Dmitriev to prison Wednesday for a period of 3 years and 6 months.  Dmitriev denies the allegation. Dmitriev is head of the Karelian Memorial Society, which is part of the larger International Historical [...]

A Hamburg juvenile court convicted a 93-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard on Thursday on 5,232 counts of accessory to murder and one count of accessory to attempted murder. Bruno Dey has been given a two-year suspended sentence, bringing to a close the trial that had begun in October. While Dey apologized to the victims and [...]

Business communications platform Slack Technologies announced Wednesday that it had filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft Corp. in the European Union (EU). In the complaint, Slack accuses Microsoft of trying to eradicate competition through tying its Microsoft Teams product to Microsoft Office. Slack alleges that Microsoft has engaged in illegal and anti-competitive practices, “abusing its [...]

A 23-year-old law student filed a federal lawsuit against the Australian government on Wednesday alleging that it failed to disclose climate change-related risks to investors of government bonds. According to her lawyers, it is “the first legal action that seeks to hold the Australian Government to account over climate change risks.” Kathleen (Katta) O’Donnell, a [...]

A Canadian Federal Court judge ruled Wednesday that the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) is unconstitutional under Canadian law, as certain provisions of the Act violate the “right to life, liberty, and security of the person” guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The STCA governs Canada’s asylum relationship with the United States, and requires that [...]