Officials in Sri Lanka announced plans this weekend to ban burqas in public and close more than 1,000 Islamic schools. These policies are the latest in a string of decisions targeting the country’s Muslim minority. Citing national security concerns, Sri Lanka’s public security minister Sarath Weerasekera signed papers for cabinet approval of the ban on [...]

Australia’s chief officer of law, Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations, Christian Porter, filed a defamation suit in the Federal Court of Australia Sunday. Porter is suing the ABC and Louise Milligan, one of the ABC’s investigative reporters. Porter argues that an article written by Milligan and published by the ABC last month claiming that [...]

The England and Wales Court of Appeal dismissed a judicial review lawsuit Sunday brought by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAWC) over the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) rape prosecutions policy. The EVAWC brought the case against the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in response to “a shocking and unprecedented collapse in the volume and [...]

In a ground-breaking decision, the Islamabad High Court in Pakistan has explicitly recognized that animals have natural legal rights and are entitled to protection under the nation’s Constitution. Non-human animals are still commonly treated as “property” around the world, which places them in a similar legal category as inanimate objects. Although problematic for many reasons [...]

The Pakistani Taliban on Friday accused International Women’s Day organizers of blasphemy and obscenity, threatening them with vigilante action in response to the proliferation of doctored images and video clips suggesting that participants in the demonstrations had insulted Islam. International Women’s Day is annually celebrated on March 8. In Pakistan, women’s right advocates organized demonstrations [...]

Bolivia’s former acting president Jeanine Anez was arrested Saturday on terrorism and sedition charges. Government minister Carlos Eduardo del Castillo tweeted that Anez had been apprehended and was in police custody. Anez served as the interim president after Evo Morales fled the country in 2019 during widespread protests against his re-election. Anez allegedly used the judiciary [...]

Hong Kong’s Court of First Instance on Saturday dismissed prosecutors’ bail appeals with respect to three defendants charged with conspiracy to commit subversion, in what is the largest case to have been brought under the region’s national security law to date. Of the 47 opposition figures charged on February 28, eight have now been released [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday that Jessica Johanna Oseguera Gonzalez pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act by conducting financial dealings with companies identified as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers. Oseguera Gonzalez is the daughter of Nemesio Ruben Oseguera Cervantes, who is also known as “El Mencho,” a prolific cartel [...]

The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales convicted Sahayb Abu on Friday for attempting to carry out a terrorist attack after he created pro-Islamic state music videos and purchased weaponry online. The police first began investigating Abu last March when his “extremist mindset” drew their attention. Throughout the next few months, Abu “purchased a [...]

The US Department of Labor on Thursday proposed to withdraw a Trump-era rule making it easier for companies to classify employees as independent contractors. The rule was promulgated shortly before President Joe Biden’s inauguration but has not gone into effect yet. It was widely expected to be eliminated by the Biden administration, which expressed an intent [...]