Flight could take off within weeks and before court has ruled on whether scheme is lawful
The Home Office is planning a second flight to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which could take off before the courts have ruled on whether the scheme is lawful, the Guardian has learned.
It is understood that a second flight could take off in a matter of weeks despite the fact that the full high court hearing to examine the government’s Rwanda plans does not begin until 19 July.
Continue reading...Overseas students have vanished from courses and then been found working in exploitative conditions
Universities have been urged to be on high alert for human trafficking after suspected victims brought to Britain on student visas vanished from their courses and were found working in exploitative conditions hundreds of miles away.
In a recent case, Indian students at Greenwich, Chester and Teesside universities stopped attending lectures shortly after arriving in the UK, according to a report by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) seen by the Observer.
Continue reading...Murders, corruption and ‘Mocro Maffia’ prompt Dutch to set up war chest to tackle wave of organised crime sweeping nation
Journalists and lawyers under protection or murdered on the streets, court hearings guarded by the army, witness statements anonymised, and billions in dirty drug money that leaches through society, corrupting as it goes.
This is the Netherlands, where these facts have now inspired a crackdown pitting some €500m a year against a level of organised crime that politicians fear is increasingly “undermining” public order.
Continue reading...Officials allege contract was corruptly procured by business duo behind P&ID as saga of energy project and secretive tribunal heads for high court
It has been described as one of the most extraordinary cases ever to come before the high court, involving an Irish impresario, an alleged $50,000 bribe stuffed into a bag and potentially one of the biggest payouts in legal history.
The saga of two Irish businessmen, Michael Quinn and Brendan Cahill, who promised to revolutionise Nigeria’s energy sector, will be at the centre of a high court trial early next year.
Continue reading...The beloved character was created in 1928 and the cartoon is widely regarded as a pioneer in animation
As a consequence of US copyright law, entertainment giant Disney could soon lose the exclusive rights to some of the characters most responsible for the brand’s universal recognition, including the mouse that acts as its mascot.
Mickey Mouse will enter the public domain in the year 2024, almost 95 years after his creation on 1 October 1928 – the length of time after which the copyright on an anonymous or pseudo-anonymous body of artistic work expires.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch calls for donors to cut off funding to security forces and urges international court to investigate
Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip systematically torture critics in detention, a practice that could amount to crimes against humanity, an international rights group has said.
In its report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for donor countries to cut off funding to Palestinian security forces that commit such crimes and urged the international criminal court to investigate.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Pether, who has been imprisoned for 14 months in Baghdad, has become ‘gravely ill’ according to his family
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has raised the case of jailed engineer Robert Pether with the Iraqi leader, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as the Australian’s family warns he has become “gravely ill” and is rapidly deteriorating in his Baghdadi jail cell.
Pether has now been imprisoned for more than 14 months following a commercial dispute between his engineering firm and Iraq’s central bank, which had hired Pether’s company to help build its new Baghdad headquarters. Pether’s family say he is innocent and the trial was unfair and compromised.
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Continue reading...Court sides with Republican states as ruling represents landmark moment in rightwing effort to dismantle ‘regulatory state’
The US supreme court has sided with Republican-led states to in effect hobble the federal government’s ability to tackle the climate crisis, in a ruling that will have profound implications for the government’s overall regulatory power.
In a 6-3 decision that will seriously hinder America’s ability to stave off disastrous global heating, the supreme court, which became dominated by rightwing justices under the Trump administration, has opted to support a case brought by West Virginia that demands the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) be limited in how it regulates planet-heating gases from the energy sector.
Continue reading...Two lawsuits are back in front of federal judges, drawing scrutiny to schools’ failure to support students who report assaults
A pair of lawsuits that for years has plagued Virginia’s largest school system with allegations that it ignored students’ accusations of sex assaults are back in front of federal judges.
One of the lawsuits includes allegations of horrific abuse suffered by a student at a Fairfax county middle school and was the basis for a 2014 federal investigation.
Continue reading...Family of 12-year-old challenged ruling Archie is brain-stem dead and treatment can be stopped
The parents of Archie Battersbee have won an appeal against ending the 12-year-old’s life support treatment.
A high court judge had ruled that Archie, who sustained brain damage about three months ago, was ”brain-stem dead” after a hospital trust asked it to decide what was in his best interests.
Continue reading...State temporarily blocked from enforcing ban as other US states pass ‘trigger laws’ designed to severely curtail access to abortion
A Louisiana judge on Monday temporarily stopped the state from enforcing Republican-backed laws banning abortion, set to take effect after the US supreme court ended the constitutional right to the procedure last week.
Louisiana is one of 13 states which passed “trigger laws”, to ban or severely restrict abortions once the supreme court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that recognized a right to the procedure. It did so on Friday, stoking uproar among progressives and protests and counter-protests on the streets of major cities.
Continue reading...Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch argued that football coach Joseph Kennedy had a right to publicly pray after games because he was not requiring others to participate in the practice.
“Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach because he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet prayer of thanks,” Gorsuch wrote.
Continue reading...With Roe v Wade overturned, government could go to court over how mifepristone is approved for use
Joe Biden’s administration has indicated it will seek to prevent states from banning a pill used for medical abortion in light of the supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade, signalling a major new legal fight.
The administration could argue in court that the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone, one of the pills used for medical abortions, preempts state restrictions, meaning federal authority outweighs any state action.
Continue reading...Lawyers representing 20-week-old foetus allege state is breaching rights of future generations
A 20-week-old foetus is fronting a legal challenge in South Korea that argues the state is breaching the rights of future generations by not doing enough to cut national emissions.
Parents and lawyers representing the foetus, as well as 61 babies and children under 11, claim national carbon targets do not go far enough to stop runaway climate change and that this is unconstitutional.
Continue reading...Jeremy Maluta reveals he is behind pro-Labor Twitter account PRGuy17 but says he has no media experience or connection to Daniel Andrews
The man behind the formerly anonymous pro-Labor Twitter account PRGuy17 has unmasked himself, after far-right figure Avi Yemini attempted to use the courts to reveal whether the account had ties to the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews.
Jeremy Maluta told YouTuber Friendlyjordies in a video released on Friday that he has no PR or social media experience, works in an industry completely unrelated to politics or the media, and has no connections to Andrews.
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Continue reading...Committee ends fifth hearing, with next sessions expected in July
Gun rights have been in the news for weeks following two shocking mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York — a fact that has not escaped the supreme court.
In his concurrence with the majority opinion, conservative justice Samuel Alito connects the latter shooting with the concealed weapons regulation that the court struck down. “Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home? And how does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator,” wrote Alito, who was also the author of the draft opinion overturning abortion rights that leaked in May.
Continue reading...Biden says ruling ‘should trouble us all’ as conservative majority strikes down law requiring ‘proper cause’ to carry guns in public
The US supreme court has opened the door for almost all law-abiding Americans to carry concealed and loaded handguns in public, after the conservative majority struck down a New York law that placed strict restrictions on firearms outside the home.
The governor of New York, a Democrat, said the ruling was “not just reckless, it’s reprehensible”. Pointing to recent mass shootings in New York and Texas, a leading progressive group called the ruling “shameful and outrageous”.
Continue reading...PM’s spokesperson says workers should not be ‘chasing inflation with wages’ as that would increase inflation
Moderna has announced that it will open a vaccine research and manufacturing centre in the UK. In a visit to mark the announcement, Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said:
We all saw during the pandemic the differences that cutting edge vaccines and treatments can make and we all particularly saw that the mRNA technology has been very transformational. It has literally saved millions of lives over the last couple of years.
And that’s why I’m thrilled to announce this new partnership between the UK government and Moderna, where Moderna will established here in the UK, a global R&D facility with over £1bn for investment in this cutting edge technology, and also a huge manufacturing centre, their largest outside of the US, and so this is a great investment in the UK, and gives huge confidence to our life sciences sector already leading in Europe.
Continue reading...Proposal to replace Human Rights Act with bill of rights is effort to make government ‘untouchable’, say critics
Downing Street will tomorrow set out sweeping plans to override the power of Europe’s human rights court just days after a judge in Strasbourg blocked the deportation of asylum seekers from Britain to Rwanda.
The abolition of the Human Rights Act (HRA), including reducing the influence of the European court of human rights (ECHR), will be introduced before parliament in what the government described as a restatement of Britain’s sovereignty.
Continue reading...Yazidi Justice Committee has been working privately for more than two years to show states failed to protect minority group
A group of high-level British lawyers have been working privately on compiling evidence to show that one or more countries failed in their international obligations to prevent genocide against the Yazidis in northern Iraq.
The lawyers, who formally announced their collaboration as the Yazidi Justice Committee (YJC) on Tuesday, have been working over the past two and a half years to investigate the genocide committed from early 2013 by Islamic State.
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