Democracy activist Agnes Chow was denied bail on Wednesday by a Hong Kong court pending her appeal of a 10-month jail sentence for unlawful assembly during the pro-democracy protests in the city last year. The 24-year old activist was one of several activists who pled guilty and sentenced this year for their roles in the [...]
The Cabinet of the Indian state of Maharashtra on Wednesday approved a draft of a bill setting extreme punishments for crimes against women and children. The Act is modeled after the Disha Act passed by the government of Andhra Pradesh state last year. Known as the “Shakti Act”, the Maharashtra bill makes numerous changes to [...]
Amnesty International Thursday urged Azerbaijani and Armenian authorities to conduct immediate investigations into war crimes committed during the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict after videos emerged from private social networks showing extrajudicial killings, torture, and severe abuse. In its press release, Amnesty said it analysed 22 videos that depicted, “extrajudicial executions, the mistreatment of prisoners of war [...]
The Lebanese judge investigating the Beirut shipping port explosion Thursday charged caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab and three former ministers with criminal negligence for the incident in August which killed more than 200 people, injured thousands more and destroyed large parts of the country’s capital. Fadi Sawan has charged former public works ministers Ghazi Zaeiter [...]
The US Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously upheld an Arkansas law setting prescription drug reimbursement rates for pharmacies. The decision in Rutledge v. Pharmaceutical Care Management Association was made 8-0, with Justice Clarence Thomas issuing a concurring opinion and Justice Amy Coney Barrett not taking part in the decision. The 2015 Arkansas law requires pharmacy [...]
The states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin filed separate briefs on Thursday urging the US Supreme Court to reject Texas’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a complaint with the Supreme Court Tuesday against Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, seeking to overturn their 2020 presidential election results. On Wednesday [...]
The Sentencing Council for England and Wales released new sentencing guidelines Wednesday that tell judges to consider their racial bias prior to sentencing. The guidelines pertain to unlawful firearm possession, discharge and acquisition offenses. The guidelines attempt to make sentences more consistent across the board. The guidelines come in response to the 2017 Lammy report that found [...]
The Finnish Parliament’s Constitutional Law Committee recommended Wednesday against prosecuting Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto for attempting to replace an official. While the committee found that Haavisto had broken the law, it ruled that his actions did not meet the threshold for prosecution required by the Finnish Constitution. Experts who spoke before the committee [...]
The Crown Prosecution Service charged four people on Wednesday for damaging the Edward Colston statue that stood in Bristol, England. The statue was torn down by Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford, Jake Skuse and Sage Willoughby during Black Lives Matter protests in June. At the time of the protests, the Avon and Somerset police did not arrest [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday in United States v. Briggs that the rape convictions of three military members were timely under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Justice Samuel Alito authored the opinion. He noted that a plain reading of the UCMJ would suggest that the former service members’ convictions were untimely. However, he [...]
